Babylift children who have spent half their lives searching for birth mother
Who am I? Who are my parents? Why was I abandoned? Where do I belong? ... Dozens of such questions have haunted the Babylift children for the past 50 years.
Nguyen Thi My Phuong, who was nine months old when picked up by Operation Babylift in April 1975, spent her early life in the U.S. alongside Huyen Friedlander, the last child to board the final flight of this operation. Both were among over 3,300 children who were uprooted from Vietnam at the end of the war and carried to the U.S. In 1977, Huyen's adoptive father read to her a declaration of her origins.
Huyen still searches for answers about her birth mother and considers whether she would be accepted in Vietnam or if the U.S. would be better for her. Her birth mother, Le Thi Dem, had expressed concerns about her daughter's acceptance in Vietnam due to their mixed heritage. In contrast, Devaki, who was adopted as an infant in Hawaii, felt she belonged naturally among her diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
Upon learning of her adoption story in 2004, Devaki decided to return to Vietnam in 2005 to search for her roots. In April 1975, the U.S. government launched Operation Babylift to airlift over 2,000 Vietnamese orphans to the U.S. as part of a special foreign-aid children fund.
Written by urgent.news from VnExpress International's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
