Thư gửi bà Betty Tisdale

Phan Quang Tue
4162 Rockcreek Drive
Danville, CA  94506

April 26, 2010

Ms. Betty Tisdale
H.A.L.O.
2416 2nd Avenue North
Seattle, WA  98109

Dear Ms. Tisdale,

The “Nguoi Viet” Vietnamese newspaper in Westminster, California published on April 11, 2010 an interview with you by reporter Ha Giang on the evacuation of 219 children from the An Lac orphanage to the United States in April 1975.  The article appeared a few days later in the “Nguoi Viet Tay Bac,” another Vietnamese newspaper in Seattle, Washington.  Since then, it has been spread all over the Vietnamese printed media and over the internet in several websites in Vietnamese.

In her article, reporter Ha Giang wrote that you were able to transport out of Saigon only 219 children and not 400 as you had wanted to, because the Under Secretary of Social Welfare, Dr. Phan Quang Dan, refused to allow children over 10 years old to leave.  According to the interview with you in the article by Ha Giang, Dr. Dan made the following statement to you: “We need to keep all of the children over 10 years old to stay for military combat.  This is the decision of our government.”

It is the statement attributed to Dr. Dan that is the subject of my letter.  In April 1975, I was a staff attorney in the Office of the Chief Justice of Vietnam.  Dr. Dan, my father, now deceased, was a Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Welfare in the Tran Thien Khiem cabinet.  Thirty-five years have passed.  The 219 An Lac children are now in their 40’s.  Thirty-five years from now, their saga might be only mentioned as a footnote in the last chapter before the fall of Saigon.  But future generations might reach back to history and might run across the article by Ha Giang of your interview.  A question then will be raised:  Was there a military use of the children by the GVN in the last days in April 1975?

I spent many hours browsing through thousands and thousands of pages of documents on the “Operation Babylift,” which the evacuation of the 219 An Lac children was a part of.  I surfed the internet on all entries recording this operation.  There is no shortage of literature covering the Vietnam War during the 21-year period from the 1954 Geneva agreements to the Communist takeover of Saigon on April 30, 1975.  There was even a movie, “The Children of An Lac,” where you were portrayed by Shirley Jones.  I paid particular attention to two articles excerpted from “Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul” published in 2000, the year you founded H.A.L.O., Helping and Loving Orphans.

In “She Saved 219 Lives” co-authored by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson, the part pertinent to the evacuation reads as follows: “. . . Dr. Dan suddenly announced he would only approve children under 10 years old and all the children must have birth certificates . . . Betty went to the hospital pediatric department, obtained 225 birth certificates, and quickly created birth dates, times and places for the 219 eligible babies, toddlers and youngsters.”  The article continues:

I have no idea where, when, and to whom they were born.  My fingers just created birth certificates . . . . When Betty arrived in Saigon, she went to Ambassador Graham Martin immediately and pleaded for some sort of transportation for the children . . . . The ambassador agreed to help if all the papers were cleared through the Vietnamese government.  Dr. Dan signed the last manifest, literally, as the children were boarding the two air force planes.

The article contains no mention of children not being allowed to leave because they were needed for military combat.

In addition, the following is from your article, “Helping and Loving Orphans: Betty Tisdale’s story:”

Because I was not an adoption agency, I did not have access to military plane provide (sic) for Operation Babylift . . . . When I got to An Lac, I promised Madam Ngai that I would save our children.  I went to the office of the ambassador and begged for their lives.  He said that if I gave him a list of names, and if each baby has a birth certificate and a legal name, he would get me an Air Force plane.  I said, “No Problem” and raced to the local hospital to get some blank birth certificates.  Since orphans were denied legal birth certificates and didn’t even have legal names, we made up both!

Again, there was no mention anywhere in your own article about the statement attributed to Dr. Dan that the children who were over ten years old had to stay behind for combat duties.

Among the multitude of documents on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, “Victims and Survivors, Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Vietnam, 1954-1975” by Louis A. Weiner is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive scholarly treatise on the subject of refugees.  Mr. Wiesner was a Foreign Service Officer and served as counselor and medical program administrator with the International Rescue Committee.  The book devotes one and a half pages to “Operation Babylift.”  It reads:

Beginning in 1974, significant numbers of Vietnamese children were adopted by American parents (1,352 in that year) and several licensed adoption agencies were functioning in Vietnam in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Welfare.  The number of children who were adoptable was not large, since they had to be full orphans (that is, with both parents dead) or be legally given up for adoption by their parents . . . .  By April 8, some 1,348 orphans had been lifted to Clark, of whom 1,311 went on to Travis Air Base in California.  President Ford met one of the flights, and was covered by news photographers.  By April 28, some 2,700 children had been carried to the United States by the operation.  Given the anxiety of the Vietnamese about the advancing North Vietnamese, it was inevitable that there would be abuses.  Both on the official flights and on those arranged by some adoption agencies on commercial planes, children who were not orphans and adults who were the wives or girlfriends of Americans were carried.  However, Operation Babylift was a success, and it created sympathy not only for the children but also for stricken Vietnam, as evidently had been intended.

In order to be approved the children had to be “full orphans” or be legally given up for adoptions by their parents. Those who did not meet those legal requirements simply could not be approved.  It was not because they were forced to stay for combat duties.

To fully understand and appreciate the events surrounding the evacuation of the children from Saigon in April 1975, one can consider a more recent incident following the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Time magazine reported in its February issue an attempt to ferry out 33 Haitian children to the Dominic Republic as follows:

There are few children more vulnerable than the Youth of Haiti.  So when the western hemisphere’s poorest country was ravaged by the January 12 earthquake, people in the developed world turned their Brad-and Angelina eyes to the tens of thousands left orphaned in the rubble.  Well meaning interest in adopting Haitian kids has spiked worldwide, prompting the Haitian government to apply the brakes, for fear that amid the chaos, children might be whisked away illegally.  On January 29, that concern seemed borne out when 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho were arrested trying to ferry 33 children out of Haiti without proper documents.  The Americans called their efforts caring, but many Haitians sided with Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, who called the missionaries misguided “kidnappers”- especially since many of the kids were not orphans at all.  The incident struck a raw nerve in a nation where children are prey to human traffickers and thousands of youth live in slavery.

In April 1975, Ambassador Graham Martin asked that the Vietnamese orphans be approved by the GVN before he could provide their transportation.  Dr. Dan, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Welfare asked for a list with the names, birthdates, and birth places of the infants. They both acted responsibly within their authorities. The children over 10 years old were not approved because they were not “fully orphans”, and thus, not “adoptable,” not because they had to stay for military combat.  Nobody knows whether Dr. Dan or Ambassador Graham Martin knew that the identification documents were forged but, no matter what the good intentions were at the moment, there was a forgery of birth certificates committed.

According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSUCS), in Asia thousands of children are involved in fighting forces in active conflict in Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka.  The Khmer Rouge communist group was mentioned as to be engaging in exploiting and conscripting child soldiers during the Cambodian genocide.  Vietnam was not mentioned as a country using Child Soldiers.

During the entire period of 21 years from 1954-1975, there was never a policy by the GVN to use children militarily.  To the contrary, it was always the GVN policy to protect and promote the welfare of the children of Vietnam.  The 1974 budget of the Ministry of Social Welfare devoted 28.98% of its budget to programs for the children.  Before the fall of Saigon, there were 61 Vietnamese voluntary agencies operating in South Vietnam of which 22 were for the Children and Family Protection, and 29 for services for youth.  There were 102 foreign voluntary agencies among them 42 were for the Children and Family Protection, 8 for Adoption and Foster Home, and 4 for the Protection of Predelinquents and Juvenile Delinquents.  During the week from January 14-23, 1975, just three months before the Communist takeover, the Ministry of Social Welfare hosted in Saigon an International Conference on Children and National Development.  At the last session of the conference, a Declaration of the Rights of Children was passed.  I attended the conference with the Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court of Saigon and we were both on the drafting committee of the declaration.  Throughout the war, the people and government of Vietnam always put first the welfare of the children.

When examining past events, in particular events of war occurring in the midst of a tumultuous chaos more than a third of century ago, it is important to take things in perspective.  Memory alone, without more, has been proven not to be a reliable source.  Facts need to be verified and checked in the context of all of the events that occurred at the period in question

As we commemorate the tragic events of the fall of Saigon 35 years ago, as we congratulate each other on the common accomplishment to save the children of Vietnam, let us also pay justice to all those who, under the most difficult circumstances, courageously carry on their duties in the midst of chaos and alarm by respecting and returning the truth to history.

Sincerely,
Phan Quang Tue.

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