Father and son reunite after 40 years after end of vietnam war seperated them

Thousands of children were fathered
by American servicemen during the Vietnam war. Now in their 60s and 70s, some
veterans are desperate to find the sons and daughters they have never known.

A tall, thin American wearing a straw hat wanders through the narrow streets
of Ho Chi Minh City, clutching a photo album. At his side is a Vietnamese
interpreter and fixer, Hung Phan, who has helped dozens of former American
soldiers locate their long-lost children over the last 20 years. His latest
client, the American under the straw hat, is Jerry Quinn. He has come to Vietnam
to find his son.
"I know we lived at number 40," says Quinn, looking down the street for the
house he used to share with his Vietnamese girlfriend. But there is no number
40.
A small crowd gathers. An elderly man, emerging from his house, explains that
when the Vietcong entered Saigon in 1975, they didn't stop at changing the name
of the city to Ho Chi Minh City - they also changed all the street names, and
even the numbers.
Jerry Quinn is one of two million American soldiers sent
to support the South Vietnamese army in the war against the North. During that
conflict, it's thought about 100,000 children were born from relationships
between local women and American soldiers. Those soldiers are now getting old,
and some are guilt-ridden, or just curious to find out what happened to their
children.
"But some fathers just don't want to know," says Brian Hjort. Together with
Hung Phan, he runs Fathers Founded, a not-for-profit organisation that puts
fathers together with their "Amerasian" children. Hjort, a Dane, was just
another European backpacker travelling through Vietnam in the 1980s when he came
across the Amerasian children. "They were in the street, begging for food and
for help," he recalls. "The Vietnamese treated them cruelly - they were the
children of the enemy."
Some had photos and knew the names of their fathers. Since the US Government
keeps meticulous records of soldiers and veterans, Hjort was soon able to link
dozens of children with their fathers - but he was sometimes horrified by the
response he received.

Jerry and his girlfriend, Brandy, before they were
parted
"They would yell at me: 'Why are you calling? What do you want? Why are you
talking about Vietnam? I don't want to have anything to do with that bastard.
He's not my son. She's not my daughter. Stop calling me!'"
But Jerry Quinn, a missionary who lives and works in Taiwan, is anxious to
find his son. He says that when he was sent to work in the Far East, he thought
it was God's way of telling him to make amends for the past. "I suppose I am
here out of guilt," he says. "And to try and do my duty as a father


In 1973, his Vietnamese girlfriend, Brandy, was pregnant
and they were negotiating their way through the bureaucracy required to get
married. But at the same time, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was
negotiating a "peace with honour" with the North Vietnamese leaders. The final
agreement demanded that US troops leave immediately and Jerry Quinn found
himself on a plane home.
"I tried to keep in touch," he says. "I sent her a hundred bucks every month
for a year. I never knew whether she got it." Brandy sent him three photos
which, 40 years later, he shows to everyone he meets in the streets of Ho Chi
Minh City. There are three pictures. A portrait of Brandy, a tall, beautiful
Vietnamese girl in her 20s; a picture of her with their baby boy; and a picture
of her standing next to a woman in a white coat.
By his third day in the city, Jerry is getting desperate. He and Hung Phan
ask for help from the owner of a noodle bar close to the house where Jerry and
Brandy once lived together. The owner sits on a stool, turning the pages of the
photo album, and when she gets to the picture of Brandy and the woman in the
white coat, she stops. "She was the midwife around here," she says. "She now
lives in America but they haven't forgotten us and they sometimes come back to
visit. In fact her daughter popped in for a bowl of noodles yesterday." Jerry
begs the owner to get in touch with the woman, and she obliges.
Kim arrives the next day. An elegant middle-aged woman, she is staying in a
smart hotel in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City with her Californian doctor
husband. She takes the album, points a perfectly manicured finger at the photo
of Brandy and calls out in excitement: "I remember her! We were good friends and
I helped deliver your baby."
Kim identifies Brandy's Vietnamese name on the back of one of the photos -
Bui. But she can't help Jerry discover his son's first name. When the Vietcong
entered the city, she explains, they threatened to kill all those who had had
any association with the enemy. "My mother made a huge bonfire and burned
everything that might associate us with America." All the carefully kept records
of the births were destroyed.


Choking back tears, Jerry asks Kim if he can hold her hands "because these
hands held my baby and this is as close as I may ever get to my son". And there
the story might have ended - in a little noodle bar in Vietnam with the
customers looking on in amazement, chopsticks suspended in mid-air at the sight
of a middle-aged, weeping American holding hands with the woman they know as the
midwife's daughter.


More than 30 years after being stripped, bound and paraded through countless
Vietnamese villages, Pete Peterson returned to the country as America's
ambassador.
While there, he shook the hands of his captors - and began a mission to save
the lives of young swimmers.

But Jerry posts the photos of Brandy and the baby to
Facebook, and says he is looking for a 40-year-old called Bui, and 8,500 miles
away, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 40-year-old man called Gary Bui recognises
the photos.

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Jerry flies to Albuquerque. In the taxi to Gary's house he is shaking with 
nerves and last-minute doubts. "Will he accept me?" he wonders. "It's been 40 
years that he has been waiting for a father. Will he let me hold him? He told me 
on the phone that he has taught himself not to show emotion."
The taxi pulls up at the house and the family is already outside, waiting for 
Jerry. "If you looked more like me, you would be me!" he says as he stumbles out 
of the taxi and grabs his son. They hang on to each other for an age, slapping 
each other's backs and crying. Looking on are Jerry's two newly-discovered 
grandchildren.
Slowly, Gary's story emerges. Brandy, like so many mothers of the children of 
American GIs, abandoned her baby son and fled for her life as Vietcong troops 
hunted down the women and children of the enemy. The baby was entrusted to 
friends who took him out of Saigon to hide until the witch-hunt calmed down.
"We lived in the jungle, in clay huts," Gary says. "There was never enough to 
eat." He was bullied by the other kids, who called his mother a whore. When he 
was four, he was taken to an orphanage, and four years later he found himself on 
board a flight to New York as part of a programme launched by the US Government 
to airlift thousands of Amerasian children to America. Brought up by foster 
parents, Gary kept copies of the same photos that Brandy had sent Jerry.

Jerry reunited with his son Gary after 40 
years 
Jerry is wracked by guilt. "I didn't know you were an orphan," he says. "I 
always thought you would have been with your mother. There is so much I need to 
learn about you."
Gary's wife and children watch this scene warily. What is there to say to 
this sudden father-in-law and grandfather, so desperate to know them and love 
them?
"I know it is late, but I want to be there for you," says Jerry. "I want to 
be in your life."

Culled