Vietnam orphans search for their roots

Via Carl

Forty years ago this month a military C5-A transport left Saigon with orphans headed for new lives in America. But a cargo door blew out, and the plane crashed. It killed 138, including 78 children.

By the time South Vietnam fell, many more Vietnamese children had left their homeland. And now, Barry Petersen tells us, some of those children, long since grown up, are coming home: 

At the memorial service, they came to remember that terrible day in that terrible war -- the crash that killed 138 people, 78 of whom were children.

But more orphans were evacuated in the frantic last days. During the Vietnam War, some 3,000 orphans came to the U.S. Orphans like Tobi Snyder, who was barely six pounds when she came to America.

"I have a real love for life," she said. "And I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I am a survivor. I am a fighter."

And *Stacy Meredith, given up by her mother when she was two. "As a child, you just don't understand how a parent could ever let you go," she told Petersen.

 More @ CBS

(*Being raised in the US she has adopted our values and doesn't realize/understand that Vietnamese mothers, both then and now, will gladly offer their children to someone who will in their opinion give them a better life. BT)

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The Fall Of Saigon April 30, 1975