Precious Cargo: Vietnamese Adoptees Discover Their Past

Launched in April 1975, during the Vietnam War's last, desperate days as North Vietnamese troops closed in on Saigon, the humanitarian plan "Operation Babylift" was conceived to fly 2,000 orphans, many of mixed race, to begin new lives in U.S. homes. The airlift got off to a tragic start when a cargo plane nose-dived into a field just after takeoff, killing over 150 babies and adults--an act that, to many, symbolized America's Vietnam experience as another case of good intentions gone horribly wrong. In the end, however, most orphans made it safely to America, and now, 25 years later, Precious Cargo recounts a return trip made by some of these twentysomething Vietnamese orphans to the land of their birth. We follow them through Vietnam's crowded markets, hospitals, orphanages and, finally, to Vietnam's national "war museum," which depicts the high human cost of the war. Most of these Vietnamese-Americans seem happy and well adjusted to their lives in America, but some hard feelings and claims that the orphans were "kidnapped" persist among a handful of old-line communists. Measuring how far U.S.-Vietnamese relations have progressed in 25 years, and reminding us of how far we have yet to go, Precious Cargo's attempts to generate feelings of goodwill and hope are undercut by far too many references to the "Babylift" air tragedy. An optional purchase for college and public library collections. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)