Shortly before the end of the Vietnam War, several thousand Vietnamese children were brought to the US to be adopted. In early April 1975, over 400 children, most under the age of two, were met at Sea-Tac airport by a crowd of adoptive parents. About half of the children were adopted by parents who lived in or traveled to Seattle to meet them, while the other half boarded another plane to meet their adoptive families elsewhere.
The "Operation Babylift" program was controversial, however. Antiwar protesters demnstrated against the program at Sea-Tac, a group of Seattle leaders described it as reminiscent of removing Indigenous children from their parents, Catholic relief agencies described the program as "mass expatriation" and a "deplorable and unjustified mistake," and a spokesman for the North Vietnamese condemned the adoptions as part of a "forced evacuation." In addition, some of the children were not orphans at all but had been placed temporarily in orphanages by their parents, who had planned to come back for them.
Sixteen of the children needed medical attention and were transferred to Children’s Orthopedic Hospital (now Seattle Children’s Hospital). The children had arrived with names but no medical records or birth dates, so the hospital staff assigned numbers to simplify recordkeeping. In this image, “Baby 558” rests in an incubator.
Caption information source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 6, 1975, pp. A1, A3. Caption information source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 7, 1975, Special Report, pp. A1-A3, A16. Caption information source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 12, 1975, p. A4.
