Overview
The end of the Vietnam War precipitated increased adoptions of Vietnamese children by American families. In April 1975, two years after the Americans signed a cease-fire accord with Vietnam, North Vietnamese troops spread through the South. The war's end caused hundreds of thousands of citizens to flee the country, fearing for their lives.
With the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang having fallen in March, and with Saigon under attack and being shelled, on April 3, 1975, U.S. President Gerald Ford announced that the U.S. government would begin evacuating orphans from Saigon on a series of 30 planned flights aboard C-5A Galaxy cargo aircraft.
Service organizations including Holt International Children's Services, Friends of Children of Viet Nam (FCVN), Friends For All Children (FFAC), Catholic Relief Service, International Social Services, International Orphans and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation petitioned the government to help evacuate the various orphans in their facilities in Vietnam. In their book, Silence Broken, Childhelp (International Orphans at the time) founders Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson chronicle their request from Lieutenant General Lewis William Walt to help with evacuations and finding homes for the Asian-American orphans.
Flights continued until artillery attacks by North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong military units on Tan Son Nhut Airport rendered airplane flights impossible.
The operation was controversial because not all children on the flights were bona fide orphans, although many were earmarked for adoption and just waiting for paperwork to come through before the operation began. Documentation was often sketchy or inaccurate. In a few cases, birth parents or other relatives who later immigrated to the United States from Vietnam requested custody of children already placed. The hasty evacuation in the final days of the war also led to debate over whether the rescue operations were in the best interest of the children.
Read more about this topic: Operation Babylift