During the Vietnam War, thousands of Vietnamese Amerasian children were born. Vietnamese Amerasians, the children of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers, encompassed a wide array of ethnicities. They had white, Black, Native American, and Latino fathers, among others. Some were conceived out of wedlock, while others were conceived out of civil unions and marriages. A majority of Vietnamese women report that they lived with the American men who fathered their children for at least some time, contrary to popular beliefs of most Amerasians being the products of one-time, casual, sexual encounters between Vietnamese female sex workers and American soldiers.
Many Vietnamese Amerasians who stayed in Vietnam endured social ostracism due to their mixed-race identity, much of which would continue into their adulthood. Discrimination against Vietnamese Amerasians was often institutionalized or carried out under the table. They were also denied citizenship, legal and social rights, adequate healthcare, as well as many economic opportunities for upward mobility. In fact, the Vietnamese government did not grant Vietnamese Amerasians citizenship until the 1990s. For these reasons, many were destined to live in Vietnam as second-class citizens. Upward mobility was extremely hard to achieve, as many Vietnamese Amerasians were denied early educational opportunities, and had trouble attaining stable and profitable jobs.
Around 23,000 Vietnamese Amerasians were eventually able to immigrate to the United States under various acts and pieces of legislation, as well as through American sponsored Vietnamese Amerasian resettlement programs of the late twentieth century. These various programs and legislation include Operation Babylift (1975), the Amerasian Immigration Act (1982), the Orderly Departure Program and the Amerasian Homecoming Act (1988). Others were able to immigrate by boat or plane during the Vietnam War. However, many Vietnamese Amerasians were unable to immigrate to America for a variety of reasons, and some still reside in Vietnam to this day.
According to a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, by 1994 more than 75,000 Vietnamese Amerasians had left the country to resettle in the U.S. And, according to Amerasians Without Borders, there were 25,000 to 30,000 Vietnamese Amerasians born during the Vietnam War from 1962 until 1975. However, governmental agencies have historically under-reported this number, including the American Embassy, which falsely reported that there were fewer than 1,000 Amerasians; the South Vietnamese Senate Subcommittee, which reported there were 15,000 to 20,000 Amerasians; and U.S. Congress, which estimated that there were 20,000 to 30,000. The true number of Vietnamese Amerasians who were born during the Vietnam War is still up for debate today.
There are around 600 Vietnamese Amerasians still living in Vietnam, according to DNA testing conducted by Jimmy Miller, founder of Amerasians Without Borders. The organization, founded in 2015, is the only currently active U.S. organization with a focus on relocating Vietnamese Amerasians from Vietnam to the United States. Amerasians Without Borders have DNA tested 600 Vietnamese Amerasians, including 161 who left Vietnam and 124 who are still there.
Jimmy, whose Vietnamese name is Tung, is himself Vietnamese Amerasian and was born during the Vietnam War on Christmas Day in 1967. His father James Miller was an American U.S. Army Sergeant Major and member of the 82nd Airborne Division, who also worked under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). James served for thirty years, and his mother Kim Phan was a Vietnamese woman. His parents were married in May of 1967 during the Vietnam War in Saigon. However, his father was forced to abruptly return to the U.S. due to an injury when Jimmy was a baby. His parents lost contact after that. Jimmy is the oldest sibling in his family, and was born on Christmas Day in 1967. Jimmy noted, “I was born on Christmas, that’s why my parents named my Vietnamese name as Nhật Tùng, with Nhật meaning day and tùng meaning fir tree. A tree of Christmas. I am Catholic and my saint name is St. Peter, who’s a leader amongst 12 disciples of Jesus. Sometimes, I think the name, the date I was born, and my saint name gave me a mission to help my fellow Amerasians.” Two half siblings were born in a later marriage, a younger brother that was born in 1970 and younger sister born in 1975.
Jimmy has dedicated his life’s work to helping Vietnamese Amerasians still in Vietnam to gain citizenship in the United States. In his own words, “How can we forget the brothers and sisters still struggling in Vietnam?” When I spoke to Jimmy, he emphasized the urgency to raise awareness in the general American public and government about the existence of Vietnamese Amerasians. He said, “Vietnamese Amerasians have many stories to be told. You can ask thousands of Amerasians and will often get the same story.” Jimmy’s personal mission is to help bring as many Vietnamese Amerasians as possible to the American homeland. “We should bring all Amerasians back to the United States. This country is big enough for all Amerasians to come live their lives here,” Jimmy said. He believes that we should see Vietnamese Amerasians in the same way that we see other refugees and immigrants who have gained safe haven in the United States, “We’ve opened up an opportunity for all people to come across borders, and we should do the same thing for Vietnamese Amerasians. Why aren’t they seen the same way?”
Before 1975, Jimmy and his family lived what he called a “good life.” “Before 1975, my family was doing okay,” said Jimmy. However, things quickly took a turn for the worse after the war. In 1977, Jimmy and his family were kicked out of their home and were forced into a new economic zone. The Communists also punished his mother for trying to escape Vietnam with her children by requiring her to complete 5 years in a reeducation camp. Jimmy recalls that she was horrified at being sent to work out in the desolate jungle, as she had lived in the city all of her life. Jimmy’s mother sent her children, including Jimmy, his younger brother and sister to live with their bà ngoại in Vũng Tàu from 1977 to 1987. Jimmy recalls that his grandmother raised him with much love and affection.
Jimmy’s family was finally able to register as a household when Jimmy was ten years old. During this time in Vietnam, the government required families to register their households so that they could get necessities such as food. The Vietnamese government wouldn’t allow his family to register as a household due to Jimmy being Vietnamese Amerasian. During this time, Jimmy and other Vietnamese Amerasians were deemed illegal citizens, despite being born in the country. As a result, they couldn’t go to school or get proper jobs. It wasn’t until 1987 that the U.S. government passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allowed Vietnamese Amerasians to get paperwork to apply to go to America. Prior to this, there were no formal programs to help Vietnamese Amerasians immigrate outside of Vietnam.
After the Vietnam War ended, there were rumors that the Communist government was embarking on a campaign to persecute Vietnamese Amerasians and their mothers. The Communist government saw Vietnamese Amerasians and their mothers as enemies of the state. As a result, after the Vietnam War, many mothers of Vietnamese Amerasians, including Jimmy’s mother, feared for the safety of themselves and their children, and for being punished at the hands of the Communist government. As a result, many Vietnamese women fled to the rural countryside with their children. Here, they hid their Vietnamese Amerasian children or sent them into hiding to live with female relatives, such as aunts and grandmothers.
Jimmy’s mother burned any physical trace of his American father, including photos and letters, because she was fearful that if the Communists found them, they would persecute the family. This was often a common occurrence with many Vietnamese Amerasians and their families at the time, who feared persecution by the Communists if they were associated with the American government or Americans in any way. Some Vietnamese Amerasian mothers burned everything. Those who worked for the Southern Vietnamese government destroyed everything related to America and had to hide their identities.
When Jimmy looks back on his childhood, he recalls, “living a life of being discriminated against and prejudice. People looked at you as a foreigner instead of as [a part of] your own people. Even when you speak the same tongue. They still don’t see you as Vietnamese because you have the blood of the enemy.” He remembers growing up and being called “half-breeds” by other children, and having rocks thrown at him or being beaten. His life was full of abuse, bullying, harassment, and fear of the government. “It’s a life you grow up with that you will never forget,” Jimmy said.
Luckily, Jimmy was able to get an education from home from an “underground” teacher his grandmother had hired, who was out of a job after the fall of Saigon. The teacher’s wife used to be a math teacher, and he was an English teacher, who now made a living by selling market groceries, including fish to locals. He dedicated his spare time to teaching Vietnamese children, and it was with him that Jimmy was homeschooled. Without the tutelage of the teacher, Jimmy would have been illiterate, like many other Vietnamese Amerasians. In Jimmy’s words, “the government killed Vietnamese Amerasians by killing their futures,” as they were fighting against a system “rigged against them.” Most Vietnamese Amerasian children were barred from seeking higher education by the government. He also noted, “only a handful of Vietnamese Amerasians were able to have a proper education,” and they “couldn’t go to school like other normal kids.” Those who were lucky enough to receive some form of education were homeschooled. Jimmy says that Vietnamese Amerasian kids “couldn’t go to school like other normal kids, and were treated differently.” Jimmy’s grandmother also made him read books, and he was an eager learner, grabbing anything he could to read to learn Vietnamese. Jimmy also liked to listen to American music on the radio, including pop, blues, soul, and especially liked country music, which helped him to expand his English vocabulary. Jimmy said that he took to this music so much because he felt that English was a universal language through music, and that he could “feel the singer’s voice in his soul”. Jimmy noted that listening to American music on the radio was a common way that many Vietnamese Amerasians learned Vietnamese. He also listened to the English and Vietnamese versions of Voice of America, a U.S. funded international broadcasting state media network, to further master both languages. By the time that Jimmy immigrated to the United States in 1990 when he was 22 years old, he had attained the education level of a third grader. After immigrating, he was able to pass the GED to earn a high school diploma. Jimmy’s experiences cemented within him the need for his children to receive a great quality of education in the United States. He said when he and his wife “came here, we wanted our kids to have a proper education, which is the key for success.”
In an interview with WBUR, Jimmy discussed a poignant moment in which he gave his own shirt to another Vietnamese Amerasian orphan who needed it. Despite Jimmy’s family being poor during the war, he remembers that the boy was an orphan, who picked up and recycled plastic to sell in order to survive. Jimmy recalls how he felt lucky in comparison to the boy’s circumstances, as he and his family had enough money to survive. Jimmy noticed that the orphan boy had no shirt on, and brought him home and gave him a shirt, as well as some broken bottles and plastic bins. Jimmy recalls that, even though he had a rough life, other Amerasians had it worse, and didn’t have families or opportunities. Jimmy feels grateful that he had both his mother and grandma in his life. However, he still wonders what happened to that orphan boy, “I don’t know what happened to him. He was young, only 10 years old.” Jimmy notes, “Even though I had a rough life, other Vietnamese Amerasians didn’t have a family or opportunity. I still had a mother and grandma.”
In 1987, Jimmy and his family applied to be relocated to the United States as part of the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allowed the children of American men born during the Vietnam War to immigrate to the United States. And, in 1990, when Jimmy was 22, they were able to immigrate to Spokane, Washington. After immigrating to the United States, Jimmy said, “life felt like a dream”. For the first time in his life, he felt welcomed. In the U.S., he found job opportunities, an education, and American friends, who embraced him into their community. He never had any bad experiences with racism and was able to joke and laugh like he’d never been able to before. Jimmy feels grateful that he was able to immigrate to the United States to, “Have a good life full of opportunity and potential.” His life in Vietnam had been full of “bad memories”, and after visiting the United States, he said, “[I] didn’t miss Vietnam at all.” Reflecting on his time in Vietnam, Jimmy says, “[the] bad memories built us stronger…[we] don’t look back. We use our experiences to strive for a better life. How can we do better? [There’s no use in] crying for the past. We need to focus on the future for our kids.”
After immigrating to the United States, Jimmy came back to Vietnam several times to visit his grandma before her passing. She decided to stay behind after Jimmy and his mother and siblings came to the United States. Unbeknownst to Jimmy and his family, his grandmother had stowed away some of his father’s information. On one of these trips back to Vietnam, Jimmy’s grandmother handed him a photo album she had hidden away during the war, saying, “Here this is, it belonged to your Dad.” She also said that she had hoped that one day he would be able to find his father. His grandmother had also saved Jimmy’s parents’ wedding invitations and photographs, as well as letters from his father to his mother which were sent without a return address. She had held onto all of these items, even though they would have been very risky to have during the war. Jimmy noted, “the older generation were more open minded” to interracial unions, including his grandmother. This is why she had allowed Jimmy’s mother to marry an American man.
In 2018, Jimmy started a Change.org petition to urge the United States to allow the remaining 400 Vietnamese Amerasians still living in Vietnam to immigrate to the United States. Many Vietnamese Amerasians have repeatedly had their visas requested denied and were unable to immigrate to the United States under the Amerasian Homecoming act due to “insufficient evidence” of their fathers being Americans. They were often not even given a reason as to why their evidence was insufficient, making it virtually impossible to prove their American ancestry.
Organizations such as Amerasians Without Borders aim to help these Amerasians get their Visas approved. However, the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City now requires additional evidence other than appearance to be admitted to the U.S, and that Vietnamese Amerasians have an American father. This can be incredibly difficult for Vietnamese Amerasians to prove for three main reasons: firstly, that many are orphans and don’t have any knowledge of their parents and/or photographs of them and their parents; secondly, that these photographs are easily lost over time; and thirdly, that these documents are generally rare to come across, as many were destroyed during the war.
Jimmy spent years trying to locate his father. Finally, in 1995, Jimmy’s younger sister was able to use an old, postmarked letter to track down Jimmy’s biological father, who was living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Jimmy was able to reunite with his father and spent two years with him before his passing. Jimmy’s reunification with his father inspired him to found his nonprofit to help other Vietnamese Amerasians reconnect with their American fathers as he had.
During the Vietnam War, conversation regarding Vietnamese Amerasians was more widespread, and even into the late 1990s, these conversations continued as reunification programs for Vietnamese Amerasians to reunite with their mothers and fathers rose to mainstream popularity and conversation. However, though this discourse has waned, Vietnamese Amerasians have received renewed national attention thanks to organizations like Amerasians Without Borders, which continue to raise awareness. This conversation must continue, as the experiences of ostracization in Vietnam of Vietnamese Amerasians today are still very real.
To learn more about Vietnamese Amerasians Without Borders, visit the organization’s Facebook page here or Instagram page here. To reach out to Jimmy directly, he can be reached at: [email protected].
Carina Kimlan Hinton is a mixed race, Vietnamese American poet and writer who explores issues of identity, cultural belonging and intergenerational trauma. Her mother’s family are Vietnamese refugees, and she grew up hearing stories of their escape during the Vietnam War. She seeks to understand this journey and legacy in her writing. In 2020, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a major in History, and concentration in Post-Vietnam War Vietnamese Amerasian History. As part of her program, she completed a senior thesis exploring the experiences of Vietnamese Amerasian children born in Vietnam during the war. You can find her work in the following publications: diaCRITICS (and here), Project Yellow Dress (here and here), Vietnamese Boat People (here and here), Real Soul (and here and here), Watercress Literary Journal (here and here) and the UC Berkeley Literature and Arts Magazine. She was a finalist for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Digital Storytelling Contest.
