REFUGEES: The Bitter Legacy of the Babylift

"When am I going home?" asked twelve-year-old Ya Hinh, just eight weeks after arriving in the suburban New York home of Janet and Louis Marchese. Hinh, called Keith by the Marcheses, was one of some 2,000 Vietnamese children airlifted to the U.S. in Operation Babylift as Saigon fell to the Communists in the spring of 1975. He had learned to say "mother," "father" and a few other English words quite quickly. But Mrs. Marchese, wife of a New York City policeman, was torn between her desire to adopt the boy officially and her awareness that his real mother might...

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