http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/10/26/the_children_they_left_behind/The Children They Left Behind
Three decades after the Vietnam War, new grass-roots efforts are underway to reunite thousands of Amerasians with their GI fathers in the United States. But indifference, corruption, and government red tape stand in the way.
When Clint Haines last scoured the highlands of central Vietnam, he was part of a US Army "hunter-killer" team, an airborne cavalry unit that swept low over the treetops, drawing fire from an invisible enemy and calling in strikes on hidden encampments. Thirty-two years on, Haines has returned to his old battlefield with the same stomach-churning, heart-pounding thrill of mission he felt every morning he boarded his helicopter in 1971. Only this time, Haines is not hunting for Viet Cong -- he is searching for the child he fathered and has never known.
Haines long ago traded his jungle camouflage for a baseball cap and chinos, and his waistline has bloated from three decades of fast food and hard knocks in a succession of jobs and marriages. His weapons retired, he is armed for this mission with a dreamy black-and-white photo of a Vietnamese woman with cascading hair and movie-star looks: 20-year-old Nguyen Lieu, his first love, the pregnant fiancee he left behind when his request to extend his tour was denied. Haines, then 19, promised to return for her and marry. They had one exchange of letters, via another GI, but then the intermediary was sent home and Haines and Lieu lost touch. The war raged on, Lieu's village fell to the North, and going back was impossible.
"It was a terrible goodbye. My intention was to finish my tour in the service and go back and get her," Haines, now living in Oregon, says ruefully. "The paperwork to get married before I left was horrendous; I didn't even try. I was young, I was dumb. What did I know? I got one letter, wrote back and included a $100 money order for her in the name of that GI. I never heard back. I wonder if she ever got it. I never even found out if our baby was a boy or a girl."
Haines is one of a small but growing number of Vietnam veterans who, after years of battling postwar demons, are finally trying to come to terms with their nagging consciences -- and with the children they left behind. Despite a US law committed to bringing "home" all children of Vietnam War relationships, thousands of half-American children are estimated to have never made it out. Branded "bastards of the enemy" in the country of their mothers, they are all but forgotten now in the country of their fathers. snip
NO ONE KNOWS HOW MANY CHILDREN were born in Vietnam to GIs, US government employees, and civilian contractors during the war, but estimates run as high as 50,000. In 1969, at the height of US involvement, there were 541,000 US servicemen in Vietnam, most with easy access to local female companionship. Operation Babylift in the final days of the war brought 2,000 orphans to the United States, some of them Amerasians, but tens of thousands were left behind.
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