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Viet Nam Lost and Found The Viet Nam war is generally understood in Australia through the stories of soldiers and refugees. Accounts of refugee experiences hint at unspeakable losses, but also community bonds that they drew strength from. by April 30, 2005 But what about those lesser-known stories, of the children who were caught up in the chaos of war, removed from their country of birth and taken into the hearts and homes of Australian families? In the post-war years, what losses might these children have faced, and what might be recovered? In 1972 I was removed from an orphanage in Saigon and adopted by Australian parents. Although no official figures exist, Western humanitarian workers estimate that, prior to 1975, Australian families adopted several hundred Vietnamese children. In 1975 approximately 250 more Vietnamese children were flown to Australia as part of Operation Babylift. White, middle-class Australian parents adopted the majority of these children. Upon arrival, the general expectation was that these children would grow up to feel 'the same' as their new, non-Vietnamese families and peers. After all, most lacked memories of Viet Nam. They rarely arrived with birth certificates and mementos. Most adoptive families lived far away from areas populated by Vietnamese refugees and their families so adopted children had little access to Vietnamese values, literature, songs or language. The Vietnamese adoptions also followed an era of Australian history where efforts to assimilate Indigenous and migrant populations into the dominant culture drew little mainstream protest. It's not surprising that adoptive parents were not encouraged by adoption authorities to provide their children with a multicultural upbringing, with an emphasis on their culture of birth. A 1980 study by Ian Harvey at Macquarie University into 109 Australian families with children adopted from Viet Nam concluded that the children, mostly still in early childhood, were successfully fitting in with families. However, Harvey also acknowledged that it was “too early to establish by research in fact how … inter-country adopted children adjust as adults and whom they identify with”. Memories of my own childhood tell a similar story. For my first five years or so in Australia I did not feel any different to my adoptive family and their social networks. But stories about Viet Nam affected me deeply. I first came to learn about my country of birth from media reports on war events, such as Kim Phuc running naked and burnt from napalm. As the only knowledge I had about Viet Nam were images and stories of war and its devastation, I grew to fear my past. Viet Nam was imagined only as a land of hardship A 2000 study by the Post Adoptive Resource Centre in New South Wales, which included interviews with thirteen adopted Vietnamese, found that other adopted Vietnamese had felt disconnected from their ancestry as they were growing up. Some had wanted to be white in order to fit in with family and peers, and began to feel uncomfortable looking different to them. The majority reported experiencing significant anti-Asian racism and had felt inferior as a result. Many felt embarrassed about their Vietnamese heritage because they could only associate it with derogatory images in Hollywood Viet Nam War movies or stereotypical images of 'desperate or deviant' Vietnamese boat people and gangs in the media. More disturbingly, ABC journalist Siobahn McHugh revealed in her 1992 book Minefields and Miniskirts that one former Operation Babylift volunteer saw some of the adoptees she brought over as babies grow up to reject their adoptive families and end up living on the street. In these cases, the notion of 'rescuing' children from poverty by giving them a new life abroad had met a very different reality. McHugh leaves unexplored the reasons why these children ended up living on the margins of their new society. There are of course other stories of adoptees with strong relationships with their parents, enjoying a lifestyle and opportunities that would have most likely been denied to them had they remained in orphanages. But I have found, underneath even these stories, is a sense of loss. The complex forms of cultural discrimination, exclusion and separation that adoptees experience are often masked by simplistic representations of their transformation from 'rags to riches'. In 2002 I began to research the lives of adopted Vietnamese as part of a Masters degree at The University of Technology, Sydney, and continued my studies as a Rockerfeller Fellow at The University of Massachusetts, Boston in 2003. Although most of the adopted Vietnamese I interviewed had enjoyed healthy relationships with their adoptive families, they also felt discomfort over their racial identity and estranged from their ethnic heritage. One Vietnamese adoptee, Sasha (a pseudonym), was raised in a rural Victorian town where racist views were so common she recalls, “I hated the way I looked [and] identified so strongly with my peers that I hated other Asians.” This view was also reflected in her attitude towards dating where she admitted, “I never felt attractive enough as the boys saw me as too 'different' to date… and I would have felt too embarrassed to be seen with another Asian male.” Compounding her own sense of difference was that she felt pressured to feel 'grateful' for being adopted, and felt that it silenced her sense of grief and loss. It also denigrated her ancestry. She says, “I was forced to feel grateful, which I resented as a child. I guess it made me feel embarrassed about my country, that it was inferior and I felt ashamed that I had to be rescued from it.” As Tobias Hubinette, a Korean adoptee and academic writes, trans-national adoption narratives send out a clear message that, “life in the West is best”. Throughout my own childhood and teenage years I also struggled to find more respectful frames of reference to Vietnam. Attitudes towards Vietnamese and Asians, filtered through mainstream representations of the war and boat refugees, were reflected in the attitudes of my peers. The kids in my local area were mostly Anglo-Australians and I was probably one of the only Asians they had ever encountered in the flesh. There were often jokes made about my Asian appearance. We grew up in the same area, had identical accents and were as 'typically Aussie' as each other, yet somehow I became different. Other adoptees struggled to belong in their school years. Many were constantly reminded by classmates and peers that they were not white: either through racism, or being treated as foreigners and asked questions like “Where are you from?” It is only in adulthood that many adoptees have gained the confidence to reengage with their heritage. This shift coincides with Australia's attempts to be more inclusive of difference. The profile of second generation Vietnamese-Australians such as Tam Le, Young Australian of the Year in 1998 and Khoa Do, recipient of the same award in 2004, has helped adoptees feel a sense of pride towards their cultural background and acknowledge their cross-cultural identifications. Adoptees are also beginning to be welcomed by second generation Vietnamese-Australians. Vietnamese Youth Media based at Footscray Community Arts Centre in Melbourne has worked with adopted Vietnamese on plays such as The Viet Boys from Down Under. Vietnamese adoptees are featured in the work of journalist and documentary maker Dai Le whose recent work profiles the 30th anniversary of Operation Babylift. However, one adoptee I spoke to expressed her disappointment in her interactions with non-adopted Vietnamese saying, “As we are adoptees, we are not considered as fully Vietnamese.” Language barriers are a main source of tension. As adoptees we are dependent on others coming to meet us on unequal terms: having to speak to us in English or by using translators. This can be as impractical as it can be painful. We are often unable to communicate with non-English speaking Vietnamese in a deep and meaningful way. Another deeper challenge we face is to find ways to resist the pressure to totally conform to notions of 'Vietnameseness'. Adopted Vietnamese International (AVI) is an online community that I developed in Australia so adoptees could build stronger ties with each other. AVI and other similar networks assist adoptees to discover how their reality is unusual, but not unique. A number of adopted Vietnamese, such as Sasha, are also beginning to return to visit their birth country. Sasha says the experience changed her life: “For the first time I felt proud of being Vietnamese. They were courageous and inventive, and were not to be ashamed of.” For many adopted Vietnamese, returning to their birth country has been both rewarding and surprisingly challenging. This was the case for Catherine Turner, who was sent abroad and adopted during the final year of the war without her birth mother's knowledge. On the AVI website Catherine emphasises that her adoptive parents loved her like she was their natural born child. However, “I grew up in a small country town where I was one of about three Asians … I felt isolated and frustrated at my differences many times.” Over 25 years later, and with the support of her Australian born adoptive parents, Catherine was reunited with her birth mother in Viet Nam. “My mother is gorgeous, kind, gentle, beautiful and best of all she loves me and has thought about me for 28 years!” she says of the experience. Catherine's birth mother believed her daughter had died in the first flight in 1975 to take orphans abroad. Known as the C-5 Galaxy crash, this flight crashed just after take-off and most of its passengers died. For many other Vietnamese adoptees, the search for surviving relatives is only just beginning and a long, frustrating journey may lie ahead. But despite the challenges, having knowledge of, and connection to the past is of critical importance to adoptees' lives. This last point remains under-estimated or left unattended by the Australian and Vietnamese governments who have failed to recognise their responsibilities to the children received from abroad, or sent overseas. The adoptees' lack of access to birth certificates, and other records of the past have left many unable to ascertain their real dates of birth, medical history and in cases such as Catherine's, knowledge that their birth families are actually still alive. Finding Viet Nam, for these adoptees, is as much about finding out 'where they're coming from' today as 'where they came from' 30 years ago. Given the recent surge of interest from Australians wishing to adopt children orphaned by the tsunami disaster and other crises such as the conflict in Sudan, it is timely to begin to reflect on the trials, errors and successes of the Viet Nam War adoptions. The challenge for any Australian wishing to adopt a child from overseas is how to successfully integrate a healthy respect for diverse racial and cultural identities. We now know that adoption is a life-long journey for the children involved, and the lack of appreciation of racial and cultural diversity in the upbringing of adopted Vietnamese means that many are still struggling to make sense of their identity today. Indigo Willing is a PhD candidate studying trans-national adoption in the School of Social Science, The University of Queensland. For more information go to Adopted Vietnamese International http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org
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