VIETNAMERICA
The War Comes Home
This book is about the Vietnam War coming home, not in the form of body bags or POWs, but as children with half-American faces searching for their fathers. In 1988, after passage of the Amerasian Homecoming Act, the United States began airlifting the natural children of American soldiers out of Vietnam. This was thirteen years after the war officially ended.
Known as bui doi, children of dust, abandoned by their fathers, often homeless and illiterate, these Amerasian kids suddenly found themselves transported into America's inner cities. Here they became the wards of refugee agencies that clothed and fed them. Vietnamerica is the story of two cultures colliding -- not in war, but peace -- as the children of America's Vietnam veterans fight their own battle for a decent "homecoming." It is also the story of the thousands of Amerasians who remain in Vietnam, some by choice, others against their will.
From the book
I am picked up early in the morning by a government car, which can barely wedge itself down the alley in front of my hotel. "Are you sure these accommodations are comfortable?" asks Mr. Chinh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs official who is my guide in Saigon. Comrade Chinh has the worried look of a man headed for stomach trouble. I assure him the hotel is fine, but it will take another couple of days before I can convince him to skip the car and let me get downtown on my own.
We drive through the Ministry gates at one minute to eight. Mr. Chinh hustles me inside for the day's first official meeting. I find the reception room, a large chamber on the ground floor, outfitted with the usual instruments of protocol: tea, coffee, plates of oranges and bananas. These are served by a woman dressed in a white ao dai. The room is furnished with plastic sofas and chairs dating from the Nixon era, an ormolu clock, and an over-worked air conditioner that barely stirs the dust balls in the corner. I will spend many hours here talking to a succession of lean cadres dressed in slacks and short-sleeved shirts. Mr. Chinh becomes so practiced at translating my questions that I barely have to ask them. I suspect the answers are similarly potted.
My first meeting is with Luu Van Tanh, the Vietnamese official in charge of the Orderly Departure Program. He begins with a mini lecture on Vietnamese history, attributing the country's refugee flows to the American trade embargo. Left unmentioned are the Vietnamese gulag and other disastrous social policies, such as nationalizing the rice market.
Having circled around the subject for a decently long time, I ask about fake families and other instances of fraud in the ODP program dealing with Amerasians.
"Both sides have their own skills in discovering fake families," he says. "The U.S. interviewers separate families and quiz them individually about the details of their lives. 'How many dogs in your family? How many chickens?' If the answers differ, they conclude the family has purchased the Amerasian. But maybe the answers differ because people feel afraid or intimidated. Many authentic families have been refused.
"We also notice a large difference between interviewers," he says. "One person accepts sixty-five percent of the cases that come before him. Another accepts only thirty-five percent. One man accepts fewer than ten percent. Everybody knows that if you are interviewed by Mr. Ten Percent, you will likely fail. People go to fortune tellers to see if there is some way to avoid Mr. Ten Percent. Other people, who believe in Buddha, think that being interviewed by Mr. Ten Percent is a matter of fate. I must say that the government of Vietnam is not as interested as the Americans in a strict reading of the law, if this reading lacks compassion."
I ask Mr. Tanh if he knows of any Amerasians not yet registered with the Orderly Departure Program. "There may be Amerasians living in very remote parts of the country who have not yet decided to leave," he says. "But people go prospecting in these remote areas looking for Amerasians to buy. Amerasians are fetching very high prices now, and I even know of cases where people have sold themselves several times over. There is really no part of the country where the news has not yet traveled."
I produce a list of unregistered Amerasians I found yesterday in the park in front of Mr. Tanh's office. Without looking at the fifty names, Tanh waves my list. "Tell these people to apply directly to me, and I will investigate their cases," he says.
Were we to pull back the curtains in the conference room and glance across the street, we would see these Amerasians sitting under a tamarind tree. But between us and them is a narrow gate through which none of them can pass.