"Ready for Anything        Counting on Nothing"

15 June 2010 

 Children of the Dust

     America's "forgotten sons and daughters" left behind in Vietnam

Amerasians -- children born to Vietnamese women and American military personnel during the Viet Nam War.

In its original meaning, an Amerasian is a person born in Asia, to a U.S. military father and an Asian mother. Colloquially, the term has sometimes been considered synonymous with Asian American, or to describe a person in the United States of mixed Asian and non-Asian ancestry, regardless of the circumstances.

Most Vietnamese Amerasians do not have this life opportunity to be loved by both parents. Their lives will never be complete because they are the "children of the dust". This term is used to describe the wandering life of Amerasian children. Their lives are described as "dust" because they are ever flowing with the wind dust, which has neither beginning nor ending. In the case of Vietnamese Amerasians, the children wander and their lives flow in their own country.

In Vietnam, they search for a place that they can belong to. In America, they continue to do the same thing -- searching for a place that they can call their own after being deserted in Vietnam. 

In America, the Vietnamese-Amerasians do not feel better than they felt in Vietnam. They have no identity. Actually, they never had the chance to identity themselves with a specific race. They did not blend in mainstream America because of the minimal education they received in Vietnam. In Vietnam, they were Amerasians, but in America, they were Vietnamese. The same way as in Vietnam, Amerasians have no place to go in this world.

Most of the American servicemen left Vietnam gradually before the fall of Saigon in April 1975. When they left, they left alone. Because of this, most of the pregnant Vietnamese girls later became single mothers. They, too, were alone. Their family disowned almost all of them because they disappointed the family.

The family trusted in them when they were sent to the city to get higher paying jobs to help ease the family economic burden. Instead of bringing back income to help, the girls brought with them an undesired individual who needed to be fed while the family did not have enough to eat. The mothers of many Amerasians, shunned for fraternizing with Americans, left their children in orphanages.

As America recovered from the turmoil and bitterness resulting from the Vietnam War, there was a growing sentiment across the nation to take care of America's "forgotten sons and daughters" left behind in Vietnam. During his speech to a Senate sub-committee in 1980, Senator Stewart B. McKinney spoke of the Amerasian issue as "a national embarrassment" and called on America's patriotic duty to take full responsibility for Amerasians. As a result, the Homecoming Act was written in 1987, passed by Congress in 1988 and implemented in 1989. Under the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act, approximately 25,000 Amerasians have arrived in America. The Homecoming Act of 1987 permitted those Amerasians fathered by U.S. "military servicemen and born in Vietnam after January 1, 1962 and before January 1, 1976" to come to America. These years were crucial for the United States because it was the high point of U.S. involvement and intervention in the Vietnam War. As part of the Homecoming Act, Amerasians received "refugee privileges and benefits" such as health care and government aids.

Vietnamese derogatory names for Amerasions > con lai or "halfbreed",  > bui doi or "dust of life", > my lai or "Amerasian",  > lai den or "Black Amerasian",  > Gold Children,  > HACs or "Half American Children,  > PAMs or "Presumed Americans"

Amerasians bore the brunt of the Vietnamese communists' hatred toward America after their take over of South Vietnam in 1975. Many Amerasians were rounded up by the Vietnamese communists and sent to concentration camps, where they were forced to de-activate mines with nothing more than a knife. When U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, an estimated 50,000 Amerasian children were left behind. Amerasians - My lai- are regarded as "bui doi" - dirt or dust of life - children of the enemy by the vengeful Vietnamese communists. However, to be My lai den bui doi - half-black Amerasian - is the lowest of the low in the repressive Vietnamese communist society.

On 3 April 1975, President Gerald Ford, announced Operation Babylift would fly orphans out of Vietnam with the 2 million dollars that a special foreign aid children's fund had provided. The orphans were both Vietnamese and Amerasian. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been evacuated, although the actual number has been variously reported.

  Vietnam to America: A long journey home (CNN) - "My mother dyed my hair black to have me blend in and to stay under the radar of the Vietnamese government. She burned my birth certificate and everything that was related to my father".
--Faithe Chu

  Vietnamese Amerasians in America - Amerasians, now in their 30s and 40s, are stuck between two cultures that don't fully accept them.

  Children of the Vietnam War - Smithsonian Magazine

  Operation BabyLift - The Lost Children of Vietnam - After President Ford implemented Operation Babylift on April 3, 1975, 1,500 Babylift adoptees were processed at The Presidio in San Francisco.

Echo Arrives in Vietnam 45 Years Ago This Month

Echo 2/7 History In The Vietnam War
May - August, 1965
July 7, 2010 is the 45th anniversary of E-2-7 landing in South Vietnam in 1965. Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion 7th Marines (BLT 2/7), commanded by Lt. Colonel Leon N. Utter, sailed from San Diego, California, on the amphibious attack transport , USS Pickaway (APA-222) on May 24, 1965. BLT 2/7, arrived in Okinawa in the third week of June, transferred to the USS Okanogan (APA 220), and sailed for South Vietnam, where, at 0800 July 7, it landed by LVTs on Green Beach south of Qui Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province, II Corps (190 miles south of Da Nang) to execute relief of BLT 3/7.

Right > BLT 2/7 Landing Area 7 July 1965 - Click to Enlarge

Echo Company 2/7, commanded by Captain Frederic L. Tolleson (Commanding Officer), 1st Lt. John J. Clancy, III (Executive Officer), 1st Lt. William C. Asbury (1st Platoon Commander), 1st Lt. Gerald W. Kozak (2nd Platoon Commander), and 1st Lt. Richard D. Boryszewski (3rd Platoon Commander), first assignment on landing was to establish beach defense from the road junction north of Hill 246 inland to a maximum depth of 500 meters and extending to tie in with Golf Company toward Qui Nhon City. Relief completed without incident at 1800 July 7.
Here is a summary of events based on information contained in the Command Chronologies (Operational Records) of 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, obtained from the History Division, United States Marine Corps, MCB Quantico, Virginia. 

  Echo 2/7 History In The Vietnam War May-August 1965

More regarding the 45th anniversary of E/2/7's entry into the Vietnam War. This is a web site by Art Miller (9-11Art.com) an artist and veterans advocate who served as a radio operator with the Tactical Air Control Party attached to 2/7 in 1965. "Vietnam - Early Operations of 1965"

 E 2/7 1964-1966 Nam Pictures of Places & Friends

Submitted to the Two-Seven Tooter Messenger 

Just a short picture display of Marines drinking beer in Okinawa. E Co's transport, the USS Pickaway, stopped at Pearl Harbor where we tried to drank all the beer there, no one remembers if we did it or not. I have more pictures of E Co. on ship and in country. If any E Co. Marines would like to see more, email me at ghemphilll@ yahoo.com.
George Hemphill
Cpl. USMC 2079636
Vietnam Veteran 

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE  

Got a photo, a story? Make a comment here! E 2/7 Tooter Messenger

Chasing Charlie

Echo 2/7 Marines in Vietnam. A well trained, hard charging rifle company.

Marine front line troops were nicknamed 'grunts'. This is because every time they sat down, the straps on the heavy packs they were carrying tightened into their chests thus forcing out air in the lungs causing a sound like a grunt. The average age of a 'grunt' was 19 and they knew that the land they operated in was littered with booby-traps. Each step they took in the jungle or in the long grass that was common in South Vietnam could result in serious injury.

Charlie was elusive and cunning. Marine grunts and aviators teamed up in heli-assaults on suspected Viet Cong strongholds. At times, it appeared that the sky was full of droning choppers crammed with combat-ready Marines. At other times, Marine grunts rode to combat on armored vehicles, such as amphibious tractors, tanks and Ontos, which ferried units into battle. But it wasn't the helicopter or the steel monster which found, faced and fought the enemy. It was the grunt. It was the young Marines of Echo 2/7, the Marine who was trained, supplied, armed and transferred to Vietnam, who made the final contact with Charlie. It was the grunt who made Charlie run.

During the Vietnam War Echo Company was a unique, well trained, hard charging and highly disciplined rifle company......the cream of the crop of the Marine Corps' 45 years ago, and still is today.

Semper Fi,

Echo Company 2/7 Vietnam Veterans Chapter