In the sweltering, suffocating heat of 1975, South Vietnam teetered on the edge of defeat.

Tensions had reached a fever pitch. The air was thick with uncertainty and fear.

Tens of thousands had already fled to Saigon, seeking refuge as North Vietnamese forces bore relentlessly through the countryside.

It was only a matter of time before the forces descended on Saigon.

Just three years before, Holt International had come to Vietnam to help unite children with families through adoption. Holt’s team on the ground had also just begun to implement Holt’s first family strengthening program — empowering families at risk of separation to continue caring for their children.

But as it became clear that Saigon would soon fall to the North, Holt’s team knew they needed to make an emergency plan for the children in their care. Even during this perilous time, foster parents and caregivers at Holt’s care center in Saigon continued to provide nurturing care for the children — some of whom carried the weight of uncertainty, aware that their futures hung in the balance, while others were too young to understand what lay ahead.

Called to Vietnam

In September of 1974, John Williams received a call out of the blue. On the other end of the line was David Kim, Holt’s deputy director at the time. John had never heard of Holt International.

“David shared with me that they were looking for someone to serve as a project manager in Vietnam,” John remembers. Holt had received a USAID grant to establish a family assistance program there, and he asked if John was interested.

John had spent two years in the Peace Corps in Thailand as a volunteer and seven working for USAID in Laos, where he met his wife. He had returned to the United States and was looking for a job.

After some time spent thinking, praying and talking with his family, John felt called to Vietnam. He signed a one-year contract … which turned into 28 years with Holt International. John eventually served as president of the organization for 10 of those.

Family Strengthening Efforts in Vietnam

“When I arrived in Saigon in early October 1974, there was no [family assistance] program. We had to design, start the program and get the word out,” John says. “Holt had primarily been an international adoption agency up to that point.”

Holt began its international adoption program in Vietnam in 1972. Over time, Holt staff recognized that many families felt they had no option but to relinquish their children — in many cases, because poverty prevented them from being able to provide the care their children needed.

“They were seeing a lot of birth parents coming in saying they wanted to relinquish their child,” John says. “If given an alternative to consider keeping their family together, that’s what they were looking for. They just were under so much stress — their child was suffering from malnutrition, health issues, etc.”

And the formation of the family assistance program changed everything.

Once families realized they had a viable option to keep their families together, they no longer wanted to relinquish their children. Within a few months, Holt’s first family assistance program was thriving, providing families with a renewed sense of hope.

“It was much like many of the family strengthening programs today,” John explains. “The role of social workers and case workers was to determine what the interests, abilities and skills of the family were. My background as a Peace Corps volunteer was as a community development worker, meaning that it was all about finding out what the interests of the community or village were and helping them develop that interest into an income-generating program that created independence, not dependency.”

Some families in the program were supported in starting small businesses, such as sewing or tailoring, which required training and equipment. Others raised animals like ducks or chickens, providing sustainable food and income. The goal was to complete each family’s case within six months, helping them get on their feet and provide for their children, keeping the family together.

“It was the first time that Holt began to broaden its services to children with a list of priorities — preserve the birth family, domestic adoption, international adoption — with no one being better than the other,” John says, describing the model of service that Holt has long ascribed to, and later advocated for when we sent delegates to help draft the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. “It’s based on the best interest of the child.”

Tensions Rising in Vietnam

By January 1975, Holt’s family assistance program was growing and the number of families in the program was significant. But the atmosphere in Saigon had begun to turn.

“In early 1975, we began to hear rumors and stories of unusual military activity on the part of the North Vietnamese,” John recalls. “Holt, by that time, had the adoption program and the three centers in Saigon. We also had a childcare center in Da Nang, the central part of the country, and a relationship with an orphanage in Vũng Tàu, which we supported.”

In mid-March, John and other Holt staff went up north to visit Da Nang to check on the childcare center and assess the possibility of expanding the family assistance program.

While there, they were invited to an event at the U.S. consulate compound. A consular officer told them there was no cause for concern — there was no possibility that the North Vietnamese could reach Da Nang because of the Hai Van Pass blocking their path.

Ten days later, Da Nang was overrun by the North Vietnamese.

“When we realized that Da Nang was going to be overrun, we did manage to get all of the children evacuated along with the staff and get them evacuated down to Saigon,” John says. “There were tens of thousands of people who were fleeing south, and the population of Saigon began to grow tremendously. We weren’t sure what the final outcome would be, but it didn’t look good.”

“By the end of March, the embassy staff was being reduced, and thousands of Vietnamese were attempting to flee the country by any means possible,” John says.

With their connections to the U.S. embassy, John and his co-workers tried their best to stay informed on the situation. At one point, one official told them, “You better make your plans to get out.”

“So, we did,” he says. “We began making plans to get out.”

Preparing to Flee

Arrangements were made for Holt to charter a Pan Am 747 to evacuate all the children in Holt’s care.

“When it became apparent that Saigon was not going to hold and it was going to be overrun, it was not uncommon for desperate mothers to come to us, pleading for us to take their children,” John recalls.  

As Holt staff spoke with each family, offering alternatives, the desperation of the situation was palpable. The families would do anything to save their children. But with Holt’s commitment to keeping birth families together when at all possible, the team declined to take in the children that had loving families, regardless of the unknowns that lay before them.

“We stopped accepting children a couple weeks before the final evacuation,” John says. “And we came under some criticism for that.”

As a newer member of Holt’s staff at the time, John shares that the decision not to bring more children to the U.S. spoke volumes about Holt’s integrity.

“I signed a one-year contract with Holt and if it hadn’t been for that experience, I don’t know if I would’ve stayed on with Holt or not,” John says today, looking back on his first dramatic months with Holt. “It said so much to me about Holt’s integrity and how careful it is. If a child is placed in our care and [is] going to be placed for international adoption — for all intents and purposes, that child does not have a good option to remain with a family in their birth country.”

Holt and other agencies began lobbying and requesting that visas and paperwork be expedited for children in the process of adoption. They appealed to both the U.S. and Vietnamese governments, and the request was approved — for Holt and several other agencies in Vietnam. Across all agencies, approximately 2,000 children were cleared for evacuation.

“Our flight was scheduled, the visas were approved and three or four days before we were scheduled to leave, the caseworkers began to spread out around Saigon,” John says. “We had maybe 250 children in foster homes scattered around Saigon, and so arrangements had to be made for them to be brought in time for the flight on April 5.”

The First Flight of the Vietnam Babylift

As the days grew closer to the scheduled April 5 flight, the Holt team was feeling the pressure.

“By now, the noose around Saigon was getting pretty tight,” John says. “There were occasional rockets coming into the city. The night sky was full of flares and tracers.”

A few days before April 5, the U.S. embassy notified Holt that President Ford had authorized U.S. military aircraft for the babylift. They were given the opportunity to be on the first flight, which was set to depart on April 4.

“We thought long and hard about it. In the end, we had already made arrangements for the Pan Am flight, and we felt good about those arrangements,” John says. “We were really encouraged to be a part of the April 4 flight. But the more we heard and the more we thought about it, we just didn’t feel comfortable with those arrangements. … We declined the offer.”

On April 4, at the time of the military flight, John and the Holt team were busy preparing for their own flight the following day.

“Here we are on April 4 and we’re frantic,” John says. “All of a sudden, we get word that the C5A — the first flight of Operation Babylift — had taken off and crashed. … Holt’s office was very near the airport. We could actually see the plume of smoke from our office.”

The plane had two decks — an upper and a lower, and tragically, many on the lower deck didn’t make it. A malfunction in the rear cargo door caused it to blow open, sucking the oxygen out of the cabin. Desperate to make it back to the airport, the crew turned the plane around. But it crashed just a few miles short of the runway in a rice paddy — killing 78 children and 50 adults. “A lot of people we knew were on that flight,” John says, his eyes growing misty as he sits in the Holt office, almost exactly 50 years later. “We didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on it at the time, but the thought crossed our mind, ‘Oh my gosh — by the grace of God….’”

Holt’s Flight Out of Vietnam

In the thick heat of April 5, 1975, the day arrived for Holt to evacuate children from Vietnam.

They proceeded with their arrangements to evacuate all the children in Holt’s care — a total of over 400 children. The Holt compound was full of children running around, while Holt staff frantically worked through paperwork. Over 250 of the foster children needed to be brought to Holt’s office for departure.

“The remarkable thing to me — so many remarkable things happened then — was that the foster parents were amazing,” John says. “With all that was going on, with all the stress and uncertainty that they faced, how much they cared about the children. … We didn’t lose a single child. Every foster family brought their child in that they were caring for.”

One image stands out in John’s memory — an image not too different from what our in-country staff still see today whenever a foster parent has to part with a child they have selflessly cared for while they waited to reunite with their birth family or join a family through adoption. It is always a bittersweet moment for these devoted foster parents, whether in the midst of war or on an otherwise peaceful day.

“One of the images that’s just seared into my mind,” John shares, “is as the busses were loaded, most of the busses had mesh on the windows — like screens or wire that you could get your fingers into and hold on — and as the busses were pulling away, a number of the foster mothers were clinging to the side of the bus to kind of get one last glimpse of the child they had cared for.”

With over 400 children in their care, they hurried to the airport and began loading the plane. Time was critical — the aircraft could remain on the ground for only an hour, and every minute cost thousands in insurance fees, totaling around $50,000.

Inside the 747, the upper deck had been transformed into a makeshift medical unit. Infants were carefully placed in baskets and boxes lined with blankets, ensuring their fragile safety for the journey ahead.

“We had four identification bands — two armbands, two leg bands — for every child with their information on it to make sure that if one came off, there would be redundant systems to keep track of who was on who,” John explains.

All the children were loaded, 409 in all, along with 50 adults. And with a deep breath, the plane took off.

“There were a lot of cheers and tears as we took off out of Saigon.”

Operation Babylift Complete

The flight first landed in Guam, then Hawaii and then Seattle. The arrival was late — around midnight, but many people had gathered at the airport to welcome the flight.

The door of the plane was opened, helping dissipate the pungent cabin air.

It had been a long ride.

“The children were taken out one by one — not rushed out,” John says. “Nametags were checked and accounted for — double-checked and triple-checked by the Holt staff there.”

John recalls that many of the adoptive parents were waiting to welcome their child at the airport in Seattle, while for others, the flight continued on to Chicago and then New York. With each landing, a family was united with their adopted child for the first time.

A Hasty Return to Vietnam

Rubbing their sleepless eyes, John and his colleagues that traveled with him on the flight had made it back to the United States.

But it wasn’t over.

John and two of his Holt colleagues, Bob Chamness and Glen Noteboom, knew they had to go back for the staff that had been left in Vietnam. And they made their plans quickly.

“We were now concerned about the Holt staff — the Vietnamese staff — in Vietnam,” John says. “We made arrangements three days later to return to Saigon. In those three days, watching television in the States, things had deteriorated tremendously. Things were changing very, very quickly.”

With uncertainty hanging in the air, the three set their course for Vietnam.

“I’ll never forget — when we flew into Saigon, we were still at 30,000 feet and then they made a very tight spiral landing down to the airport in Saigon,” John shares.

Their corkscrew landing on the airfield was much like the whirlwind to come. The city was in chaos. On their drive back to the office, the streets were in complete anarchy.

“There was very little law and order to be had,” he says.

After returning to the Holt office and strategizing with the staff, the team got to work compiling records to be flown out of Vietnam.

“We were also concerned about the records — knowing how important the child histories are,” John says. “That was another thing that impressed me about Holt, that they made every effort to document the background and circumstances for each child coming into care. We chartered a DC3 aircraft to take out all the boxes and boxes of childcare records and medical histories for the kids.”

An Overflowing Operation

The U.S.-sanctioned babylift flights were intended for children with approved parole visas in the process of adoption. There were originally 2,000 children approved for the airlifts, including the 409 children who were in the care of Holt International.

“I don’t know how many children were eventually flown to the U.S. and other countries under the name of Operation Babylift. I’m pretty certain that the number exceeded the [number] that it was designed for,” John says.

Between April 2 and April 29, it is estimated that over 3,000 children were evacuated, joining families in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Canada.

“I can only speak for Holt, my experience in Vietnam and the way that Holt conducted its affairs during that period of time,” John says. “The integrity of the program and the care and carefulness that Holt social workers took to document, provide care, and provide alternatives to birth parents, the efforts to research the background, to make sure that if a child was placed for international adoption, that there were few, if any, viable options for that child to remain in a safe and secure family setting in Vietnam at that time.”

Time Running Out in Vietnam

As the levels of desperation and panic rose, the plan to evacuate Holt staff became imminent.

“We developed a list of our staff that we believed would be vulnerable under a North Vietnamese regime because of their close ties — either having worked with the U.S. military before or government agencies before,” John says.

They made arrangements for those who wanted to leave — around 150 Holt staff and their immediate family members — to be evacuated on a flight leaving on April 27. On April 25 and 26, Holt began transporting staff members to the airfield.

“Someone from the embassy had left us their car which had diplomatic license plates on it — and it didn’t get stopped,” John says of the military and police personnel who were turning people away, regardless of their papers. “With that one car, we ferried people to a holding area in the air base where they were told to wait.”

After many hours, all 150 Holt staff along with their family members had made it to the airfield, along with hundreds of boxes full of childcare records for the DC3 chartered flight.

A Promise for Evacuation

It was April 27 and the DC3 was loaded with all of the child histories. There hadn’t been any fixed-wing airplanes that had taken off for several days.

“We wanted to wait till [the Vietnamese staff] had been taken out — to make sure they got out — but we were told by one of the U.S. officials, ‘You’ve got to leave now. If you don’t leave now, the likelihood of you getting out is very slim,’” John recalls.

They were promised by an official with a connection to Holt that the Vietnamese staff would make it out. Thinking that he’d have the Holt staff’s best interests in mind, they took him at his word.

“One of the hardest decisions that any of us ever had to make was telling our staff, ‘Okay, you’re here,’” he says. ‘“We’ve been promised that you’re going to be put on an evacuation flight.’”

John boarded the DC3 aircraft, intended for transporting records, along with Glen and Bob. The seats were lined with boxes full of records — child histories and medical documentation from the children that had been in their care.

Left Behind in Vietnam

When they arrived in Singapore, their first stop, they called the Holt headquarters immediately.

“We called the office in Eugene to let them know we were out,” John says. “They said that they had just received a call from a Holt staff member in Saigon. How on earth they managed to get a call through — I don’t know. But they were pleading for Holt to get them out.”

As they waited on the airfield for their flight out, the Holt staff were told, “You’ve got to get on the bus. We’re going to have to take you back to the Holt office.”

The staff pleaded, “There are North Vietnamese soldiers coming down the street. Isn’t there anything you can do to help us get out?”

John says that while some of the Holt staff in Vietnam did subsequently get out, others didn’t. “We know what happened to some and others we don’t,” he says.

Between 1975 and 1995, over three million people fled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. More than 2.5 million refugees resettled around the world. And it is estimated that between 25,000 and 50,000 refugees perished at sea.

Reflecting on This Pivotal Moment in History

Had it not been for the evacuation of children in Holt’s care, John says their fate may have been grim. Many of them were biracial children born to Vietnamese mothers and foreign soldiers, caught in the grip of poverty with no family to care for them. Much like the children born to Korean mothers and foreign servicemen who Harry Holt felt called to help two decades before, the “Amerasian” children born during the war in Vietnam would likely face discrimination throughout their lives. 

“There’s a term that applied not just to Amerasian children but to Vietnamese street children: ‘The dust of life’ or ‘bụi đời.’ If you were a street child without means, you were not treated very well,” John reflects. “A lot had to do with social status — if [they were] on the streets or in an orphanage without the social status of being from a higher society family … I don’t even want to necessarily think about what would have happened to them. By that point, they were already separated from any known birth parent. [They] would have been in very, very, difficult circumstances.”

Their futures were forever altered by the evacuation flights that famously came to be known as Operation Babylift — bringing them across the ocean for a chance at a new life and into the arms of loving adoptive families.

“I don’t know how many people in this day and age know there was something called the ‘babylift’ in Vietnam,” John says. “But the babylift was one moment in time, and it was part of a much, much bigger story about Vietnam. And for that one moment in time, I like to think of it in terms of Holt’s role and how it conducted itself in that moment.”

More Stories to Be Told

John William’s incredible account of the events that transpired in Vietnam is just one story of so many.

The story continues with the lived experiences of adoptees today — what were their childhoods like joining adoptive families in the United States? Where are they now?

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Four-hundred-and-nine. Four-hundred-and-nine children evacuated from Holt child care centers in Vietnam in the spring of 1975. The most notable being the Pan-America “babylift” flight out of Vietnam on April 5, 1975.

The flight took off from Saigon, current-day Ho Chi Minh City, just before the city was overtaken by the northern Vietnamese army.

John Williams, who some years later served as Holt’s president, was working with Holt in Vietnam at the time of the airlift.

“All the kids had arm bands and leg bands on every limb to identify them so they wouldn’t get mixed up or lost,” John says of the children on Holt’s flight, most of whom were already matched with adoptive families in the U.S. at the time of the emergency evacuation.

“It was a long, long flight,” he recalls.

The plane flew from Saigon to Guam to Honolulu to Seattle to Chicago and finally New York. Beginning in Honolulu, and at each stop along the way, children united with adoptive parents who were extremely relieved to know their children had made it out safely. Because this wasn’t the case for everyone… An evacuation flight just days before — a flight the Holt children had nearly been on — tragically crashed several minutes after takeoff.

And just a few days later, John Williams – upon his return to Vietnam to help Holt staff evacuate – described the scene as “total anarchy in the streets — which were littered with uniforms and military equipment discarded by South Vietnamese soldiers fearing for their lives.”

This year marks 50 years since Operation Babylift, which was a defining and iconic moment in Holt’s history and legacy of caring for orphaned and vulnerable children.

But this flight was not the beginning of Holt’s work in Vietnam, and it certainly didn’t mark the end.

Holt Began Work in Vietnam

Holt first began working in Vietnam in 1972. The program primarily helped place children with adoptive families in the U.S. Because of the decades-long conflict in Vietnam, there were an estimated 900,000 homeless children in the country at the time.

Holt opened a child care center in response to this great need, providing the food and care that children needed while searching for permanent families for them through international adoption.

While some of these children had no known living parents, many of them did.

“Because of the conflict,” John says, “there were a lot of parents of children who were under great duress and thought their children would be better off in an institution because they were short of food and medical care.”

Realizing this, Holt’s team in Vietnam believed there should be alternatives or options other than international adoption for birth families to consider. Holt sought and secured a USAID grant to help reunify children from institutions with their birth families and empower families in poverty to continue caring for their children.

This is how Holt’s first family strengthening program began — in October 1974.

“The program was getting off to a very good start,” explains John, a former community development Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and USAID agriculture and refugee resettlement officer in Laos, hired by Holt to manage the program. By January 1975, John says the number of families in the program was significant. But as it became clear mid-to-late March that Saigon would soon fall to the North, the program was cut short — and Holt’s team on the ground realized it was time to make plans to leave the country.   

International Adoption Today

After the babylift, Holt couldn’t fully serve children in Vietnam again until 1989, when the Government of Vietnam invited Holt to help support and operate orphanages. In the ensuing years, Holt continued what they started before the babylift in 1975 — developing programs throughout the country that enabled children to stay in the loving care of their birth families.

International adoption from Vietnam to the U.S. occurred mostly off and on throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as adoption legislation and country agreements changed, and was suspended in 2008. But in 2014, Holt was specifically invited to reopen the international adoption program to begin finding families for older children and those with special needs.

Today in Vietnam, similar to in the 1970s, most of the children in orphanages have living parents or extended birth family. But the reasons they remain in orphanage care are complex, from neglect or abuse to poverty or other crises that keep their families from being able to meet their child’s basic needs.

Child welfare centers are meant to provide temporary care for children — with the first goal being to reunify each child with loving birth family. Domestic adoption is pursued for the children who can’t reunify with their birth family. And only once these options are exhausted, international adoption is seen as the best opportunity for a child to grow up in a family, and not an institution.

Huong Nguyen, Holt’s Vietnam country director, explains that the government has strict criteria for who can and can’t be enrolled into orphanage care. “First, [the government] sees if the child has any kind of relatives who can take care of them,” she says. “And even if a child does come to live at the center, they have a plan for reaching out to the family to discuss when they are able to reunite the child and the family.” 

Holt partners with both government-run and private child welfare centers across the country, providing caregiver trainings and other services to ensure the best care possible for the children who call these centers home.

While many of the children living in the centers are healthy and developmentally on-target, there is a much higher rate of children with disabilities and special needs living in institutional care than you’d find in the general population. The resources needed to care for a child with a disability are so much greater, and for a family already living in poverty, it can feel impossible. 

While orphanages in Vietnam have a high rate of children with disabilities, this reflects a higher overall rate of children born with birth defects and disabilities than other countries — particularly in certain regions of Vietnam. And the reason for this is tied to events from over 50 years ago.

While it was their grandparents and great-grandparents who lived through it, even generations later, Vietnamese children are still feeling the physical effects of the war. One region that was especially impacted is the city of Hoi An.  

Special Needs in Vietnam

Hoi An is a World Heritage Site and a beautiful coastal town that was once a significant Southeast Asian trading port in central Vietnam. It’s also the location of the Kianh Foundation – an incredible school for children with disabilities and special needs that’s supported by Holt sponsors and donors.

“The rates of disability are about 15 percent higher here,” says Hoang Pham, the program development director of the Kianh Foundation. And the likely cause is Agent Orange.

During the Vietnam War, American forces blanketed Hoi An and the surrounding region with the deadly chemical compound Agent Orange as they tried to fend off enemy troops. Thousands of innocent civilians died from exposure. And for more than two generations, women in areas once hit by Agent Orange have given birth to children with much higher-than-normal rates of physical and developmental disabilities.

But in this region with such high needs, there are few resources specifically for children with disabilities. That’s why the Kianh Foundation is so important.

The Kianh Foundation is an incredible, one-of-a-kind school for children with disabilities and special needs in Vietnam. Here, they learn life skills, have access to occupational and physical therapy — and grow and develop beyond what their families ever dreamed possible.

Every day, children with autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and more come from the surrounding area to learn. But there are many more who want, and need, to come.

“We have a wait list of about 200,” Hoang says. “And the school can hold just 80.”

Through word of mouth, parents hear about the Kianh Foundation and desperately hope their child can have a spot. Attendance here is one of the greatest hopes they can find for their child to thrive, and have as independent a life as possible.

Throughout Vietnam, some families know about Holt and come to us for help. But the majority are referred to Holt by the local child welfare officials. Since the end of the conflict in Vietnam, and the reunification of the country, Vietnam operates through a strong centralized government, with local branches in each province and city. Holt works closely with the government, often filling in the gaps to provide help.

“We support the parts that the government cannot,” Huong says. This can be Holt donor-funded programs like the Kianh Foundation, as well as individual families throughout the country who are living in poverty.

Family Strengthening in Vietnam

Life in Vietnam has dramatically changed in the 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. Economic reforms have led to greater prosperity for many people. But they have also increased disparities between rich and poor, rural and urban, and ethnic majority and minority families. Rural families often migrate to cities in search of work, putting children at risk of family separation, trafficking and exploitation.

Because of this, Holt’s family strengthening program – which began because of the needs children and families faced towards the end of the war – is active and strong today, serving more than 6,000 children and families across the country.

The Vietnamese government is quick to identify families living in poverty, however they often don’t have enough resources to provide the help children and families need to overcome it. This is where Holt Vietnam and Holt donors come in with education, single mother support and economic empowerment programs.

Helping Children Go to School

Helping children go to school is one of the foundational ways Holt donors help children in Vietnam. While some aspects of school are free to students, essentials like tutoring fees, school supplies and more can easily force a child to drop out sooner than they should. But with the right materials, and the caring oversight of a Holt social worker, thousands of children are excelling in school and on their way to graduation.

This begins at even the earliest ages, at Holt-supported daycares and preschools throughout the country. Many families living in poverty would never have the option to send their child to preschool, or even have a safe place to send their child while they go to work. And because of the nutritious meal these children receive each day at preschool, malnutrition rates have dropped significantly!

Older children receive the economic support they need to continue in their studies. And for older teenagers who may have already dropped out of school — a common occurrence for those who don’t pass the entrance exam for secondary school — Holt sponsors and donors help provide vocational training. By learning a trade such as hairdressing or running a food cart, they have the opportunity to learn a stable trade to support themselves.

And the support Holt donors provide stretches to help the entire family.

Strengthening the Entire Family

“They are the poorest of the poor,” Huong says of the families in Holt’s family strengthening program today. “They’re really in need of support, and we come at the right time, when they are at the risk of family separation or at the risk of children dropping out at school.”

Some families, out of desperation and poverty, will place their child in an institution if they aren’t able to provide enough food, medical care or other basic needs. But keeping a child in the loving care of their family is Holt’s biggest goal.

They are the poorest of the poor. They’re really in need of support, and we come at the right time, when they are at the risk of family separation or at the risk of children dropping out at school.

Huong Nguyen, Holt Vietnam’s country director

To do this, Holt’s family strengthening program comes around families living in poverty, equipping them with the tools to become self-reliant and independently provide for their children.

Once these families are identified with help from the local government, a Holt social worker will visit their home, get to know their family, understand their needs and begin to make a plan with them. For many families, this can mean helping them start small businesses or other income-generating activities like raising ducks or goats, opening a small shop, and more.

“We work with them to identify their potential and abilities, and make a business plan for them,” Huong says. “It’s very individualized. It’s a case management approach.”

In Vietnam, this often works in combination with providing education to their children. Or, if they are young, single mothers, Holt’s team in Vietnam also provides support and resources as they learn to care for their baby.

The result is that each family receives just the help they need to make their life better, overcome poverty and stay together.

While Holt’s work has grown and changed over the years, its goal and the dedication of Holt staff and donors have remained the same since John Williams first arrived in Saigon in October 1974 to help create Holt’s first family strengthening program.

Amazing Commitment in Vietnam

“The degree to which the staff, under tremendously stressful circumstances, did their job…” John trails off as he fights back tears, recalling the days leading up to the babylift in April 1975. “Their commitment was amazing.”

And this amazing commitment continues today from the Holt staff, and the Holt sponsors and donors who make Holt’s work in Vietnam possible — all for the sake of children and families in need.

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Give emergency help to a child who is hungry, sick or living in dangerous conditions. Your gift will provide the critical food, medical care, safety and more they need when they need it the most.

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The post Fifty Years After the Vietnam Babylift, Holt’s Work Continues appeared first on Holt International.

In April 1975, Jon Dull, Jodi Willis and Thuy Williams were children living in Vietnam, strangers to one another. But within a few weeks, all three would be evacuated from the war-torn country, shortly before the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Jon, Jodi and Thuy were part of what has come to famously be known as “Operation Babylift.” The babylift was a series of flights at the end of the war that followed an evacuation order issued by U.S. President Gerald Ford for Vietnamese children living in orphanages, and who were already in process, to be adopted by families in the U.S. Many of these children were fathered by military personnel from the U.S. and other countries, and the children who were part of the babylift also joined families in other Western nations. Holt was one agency that took part in this effort. During the month of April 1975, Holt safely evacuated more than 400 children in our care, many of whom traveled aboard a Holt-chartered Pan Am flight that left Saigon on April 5.

Shortly after leaving Vietnam, Jon, Jodi and Thuy were adopted into families living near Portland, Oregon, and the three still live in the area today. In addition, they are all members of an Operation Babylift adoptee group on Facebook. In the summer of 2024, with the 50^th anniversary of Operation Babylift approaching, Jon felt inspired to reach out to other adoptees in the area, asking if anyone wanted to meet up for lunch. In total, five adoptees (four of whom were adopted through Holt) and two spouses gathered at a Vietnamese restaurant in Portland. As the group had never met before, they spent a couple of hours getting to know one another, speaking of their origins in Vietnam, the families in which they grew up and other aspects of their lives. They also expressed that they felt Operation Babylift had given them a second chance at life. Recently, Jon, his mother Joy, Jodi and Thuy shared more about their lives and their adoption journeys with Holt. Here are their stories.

Jon Dull: “I Was Given a ‘Golden Ticket’”

In the spring of 1974, Joy and Jerry Dull were the parents of four young children, hoping to add another child to their family. They had begun working with Holt on the adoption of a child from Vietnam, but soon learned that they would not be eligible to move forward as they already had children. So the Dulls refocused their efforts on adopting a child from South Korea. After about a year, Joy and Jerry had given up hope as the waiting process lingered.

Then on April 2, 1975, Joy received an unexpected call from Holt that changed their lives. Their social worker had just received word that a chartered flight with more than 400 orphans in Holt’s care would be leaving Saigon on April 5 and arriving in Seattle a day later. On that flight was a 5-month-old baby named Tran Ai Quoc, who was in immediate need of an adoptive family. The child had been relinquished by his mother at birth and had been living in a Holt-run orphanage in Saigon for months. Since the Dulls had been in the process of working with Holt and had gone through the necessary background checks, they could move forward with the adoption of this baby. “Of course we were very excited,” says Joy. “But we had just a few days to pull everything together.”

Late in the day on April 5, Joy and Jerry made the four-hour drive up to the Seattle-Tacoma airport to await the arrival of a Pan Am jumbo jet that held their new baby. They were surrounded by a sea of other Holt parents, many of whom had been in the process of adopting from Vietnam for the past 12 to 24 months. The scene at the airport that evening was hectic and filled with nervous anticipation, Joy recalls, as the parents waited for the plane’s arrival. Finally, at 12:30 a.m. on April 6, the families drew a sigh of relief as the Pan Am jet came into view and landed safely with the babies, nurses, doctors and other personnel on board. Six hours later, the children were released to their parents after receiving their vaccinations and clearing immigration. The Dulls’ baby appeared to be tired from the long overseas flight but was otherwise healthy, weighing in at a little more than 13 pounds. Recalling her first moments with her child, Joy says, “He cried for a while — I think he was hungry and not used to his new environment.” But soon after taking a bottle, the baby settled down for the long car ride to his new home in the U.S.  

Joy and Jerry named their new child Jon Michael Dull and raised him in a small town south of Portland. In time, the couple would go on to adopt two more children, a 14-year-old boy from South Korea and a 12-year-old girl from India. Growing up in a large and loving family, Jon formed close bonds with his parents and six siblings, and embraced the opportunities he was given. He was the first of his siblings to go to college, earning a bachelor’s degree in business economics and an MBA with a focus in finance.

He and his wife, Charlotte, have also traveled to many places in the world, visiting Vietnam several times. “I went to Vietnam because I like to travel, not to find my roots,” says Jon. Yet, in 2018, Jon and Charlotte brought Joy on a trip to his birth country, visiting places like Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Da Nang, Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. “My mother had always wanted to see Vietnam, so when we had the opportunity to take her there, we did,” he says. Then last November, coinciding with his 50^th birthday, Jon and Charlotte returned to Vietnam and traveled to an orphanage north of Da Nang. They visited the children during dinner, spent some time talking with them and helped clean up afterwards. “I’m not really sure why I decided we should go visit an orphanage,” says Jon. “But I felt it was important for me to visit one on my 50^th birthday trip to help remind me [of where I once lived] and ground me.” Jon and Charlotte also plan to live overseas for a few years in the near future once they’re both fully retired. They hope to engage in volunteer work, possibly in an orphanage in Da Nang.

Looking back on the past 50 years, Jon believes that being part of Operation Babylift has had an impact on his life, but doesn’t define him. As he says, “I never really felt that I was adopted, in that my parents are my parents. But I also believe that I’ve been given a ‘golden ticket’ in life, and I have tried to make the most of it. Knowing that I came from an orphanage in Vietnam — and [sensing] what my life would have been like had I stayed there — has motivated me to enjoy every moment and to experience life to the fullest. Beyond that, I’m grateful to the unsung heroes of Operation Babylift, everyone from the Holt workers in Vietnam, to the pilots, nurses and other flight volunteers, to, of course, my parents. If it wasn’t for their efforts, none of this would be possible for me today.”

Jodi Willis: “I Am Grateful to So Many People”

Jodi Willis was born on March 21, 1975, in My Tho, Vietnam, a city located in the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon. Born to a single mother, Jodi was brought to an orphanage in Saigon and into Holt’s care when she was 3 weeks old. At the time, she weighed less than 5 pounds and was sickly and small.

Two weeks later, however, Jodi was evacuated from Vietnam on Holt’s last flight out of Saigon. She was placed on a military cargo jet with the remaining babies in Holt’s care, leaving Saigon on April 27, 1975. Three days later, the city would fall to North Vietnamese forces, leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule. With all the chaos surrounding them, “the evacuation itself was a miracle,” says Jodi, now 50 and living in Oregon with her husband of 31 years and two children. “Everything was working against us. We were lucky to have even had a runway to get off the ground.”

But fortunately, Jodi’s flight did take off safely, and on its way to the U.S. stopped at a military base in Honolulu to refuel. While there, all of the children were medically evaluated, and Jodi and another baby were detained as they were too sick to continue. But in a week’s time, Jodi’s health had improved enough for her to be placed on another flight to Portland, Oregon. On May 5, 1975, she met her new family — her parents, John and Sherri, and an older sister who’d been adopted from South Korea two years earlier.

Jodi’s family would grow in time as her mother gave birth to a daughter in 1976, and the family would adopt a 13-month-old boy from South Korea three years later. She and her three siblings were raised in a Christian household in a predominantly white community, south of Portland.

Recalling her early days, Jodi says, “I had a very challenging childhood. Growing up, I knew that the Vietnam War wasn’t popular, and I was afraid people would be cruel to me because of this. I was afraid people would think I was a Communist.” For many years, Jodi chose not to explore her roots in Vietnam — or the early weeks of her adoption story. “To be honest, I didn’t think it was possible,” she says.   

But in 2021, Jodi discovered that it was possible to retrieve her adoption records through Holt and saw for the first time her Vietnamese birth certificate. Through an English translation of the document, Jodi discovered her birth mother’s name as well as her own birth name, birth date and other data. She also was able to view her medical information from the time she was in Holt’s care and learned the name of the American nurse who completed her intake exam. (The nurse, now elderly, lives in the U.S., and by a stroke of luck, Jodi was able to locate her on Facebook. The two have spoken since, filling in gaps to Jodi’s early story.)

Jodi credits her own evacuation from Vietnam — as well as the safe retrieval of her adoption files — to the efforts of two men, Glen Noteboom, a Holt social worker in Vietnam in the 1970s, and former Holt president John Williams, who started his career with Holt as a project manager in Vietnam just before Operation Babylift. Both men are now in their 80s. Jodi was fortunate enough to meet John in 2024, as he helped fill in more of her story. John described how he and Glen did not leave Saigon until every one of the children in Holt’s care was safely evacuated from the war zone. He also described how he and Glen safeguarded the children’s records, by packing a small chartered DC-3 aircraft from floor to ceiling with boxes and boxes of documents, before boarding that plane themselves and leaving Saigon. Those documents today are secured at Holt’s headquarters in Eugene, Oregon.

Though Jodi has not been back to Vietnam since she left as an infant in 1975, she does have a desire to someday visit. “Obtaining my adoption records in 2021, approaching my 50^th birthday, and meeting John Williams, who answered so many of my questions and eased so many of my uncertainties, has lit a desire in me to find out more about myself,” Jodi says. Returning to Vietnam may also provide insight and clarity into all of the forces that worked together to bring her to the U.S., from the nurses and orphanage workers who cared for her as a baby, to those who helped her evacuate as chaos ensued, to her parents who answered the call to adopt 50 years ago today.

“Operation Babylift gave me a new life,” says Jodi, one filled with love, challenges and opportunities. “My husband often tells me that God knew I was meant to be his wife, so Christ brought me across two oceans to bring us together. Looking back, the evacuation is the ashes that brought the beauty of a new life.”

Thuy Williams: “I Was Given a Second Chance”

Thuy Williams remembers hearing the bombs fall around her as a young child growing up in Saigon. She also remembers being hungry and terrified. In April 1975, Thuy was 5 years old, the daughter of a single mother who had given birth to her at age 16 and a father who had been a U.S. Marine serving in Vietnam. Thuy was an “Amerasian” child — half Asian and half American — and as the fall of Saigon grew closer, her mother, Ho, feared for her safety. Biracial or Amerasian children faced discrimination growing up in Vietnam, and Thuy says there were rumors that all Amerasian children would be killed at the end of the war.

So on April 4, 1975, Ho made arrangements to help Thuy leave Vietnam. She brought her to the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon and placed her on a military cargo plane bound for the U.S. (To read more of Thuy’s remarkable story, and to learn how this plan came about, see When Life Gives You Second Chances.) But shortly after Thuy boarded that plane, she was removed from it, as the flight had too many passengers. She was scheduled to travel the following day, April 5, on one of Operation Babylift’s next flights out of Saigon.

As it turned out, the change in travel plans likely saved Thuy’s life. Shortly after takeoff on April 4, the military plane — with more than 300 passengers on board — suffered a mechanical failure and crashed in a rice paddy near the Saigon River. Sadly, 128 people died, including 78 children. In the chaos, Thuy’s mother was told that her daughter had perished.

The next day, however, Thuy flew to the U.S. on a chartered Pan Am flight alongside another 324 infants and children, including survivors of the previous day’s crash. Not knowing that fate had played a part in her journey, Thuy simply recalls sitting next to another little girl on the plane and pretending to read her a book. (The book was given to Thuy by a flight attendant and written in English.) She also remembers stopping at a military base in the Philippines where a U.S. serviceman came on board and offered her a hard-boiled egg. “Much of the trip was a blur, but I have these two memories,” says Thuy.

Unlike Jon and Jodi who had been in Holt’s care in Vietnam and who were placed on a Holt-sponsored Pan Am flight, Thuy did not join her family through Holt and was on a separate Pan Am flight on April 5.  So when she arrived at the airport in Portland, Oregon, she was greeted by Jenny Williams, a mother who had agreed to foster a 6-month-old baby from Vietnam. Much to Jenny’s surprise, Thuy was a 5-year-old child who spoke no English. But undeterred by this change in plans, Jenny and her husband, David, decided to not only foster Thuy but to adopt her — giving her a permanent home in Oregon.

Thuy grew up in a largely white community, sharing a loving home with her parents and two younger sisters. But like many adoptees, the trauma of her early years in Vietnam stayed with her. Since trauma-informed adoption therapy did not exist at the time, Thuy’s parents looked for physical activities to help her find an outlet for her emotions. When she was 8, Thuy joined a children’s soccer team, and that was the beginning of her lifelong love of sports. “Playing soccer gave me something to do and took my mind off things as I could totally focus on the game,” she recalls.

In time, Thuy would take her passion for sports and turn it into a mission to help others. At the age of 20, Thuy joined the military for eight years, serving as a tank mechanic in the U.S. Army,  in an effort to honor her birth father and to serve America, the country she loves. Upon her return to civilian life, Thuy became a sports coach, public speaker, mentor and missionary, eventually leading some 30 humanitarian trips to impoverished countries around the world. She’s focused her outreach on helping kids who’ve faced trauma — in the U.S., in war-torn countries and in refugee camps abroad.

Looking back on her time in Vietnam, her evacuation to safety through Operation Babylift and her life thereafter, Thuy says, “I believe we’re all put here on this earth for a purpose, and mine is to make a positive impact on children around the world. Because of the things I saw in Vietnam and the poverty I experienced, I think I’m able to connect with kids in refugee camps and in poverty. One of the things I love is going to an area where there’s no hope for kids and bringing out a soccer ball, and seeing the smiles on their faces. I think, if nothing else, I was put on this earth to give these kids a little bit of hope that things can get better. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But there’s always a hope for something better.”

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The post Operation Babylift Changed Our Lives appeared first on Holt International.