30 Years Later, Immigrants Shed Vietnam War's Burdens

Delahunt arrived as part of Operation Babylift, conducted in the frantic weeks before North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon. The U.S. government commissioned jetliners to ferry hundreds of orphans to new homes here. Some Vietnamese parents, learning of the flights, left children at hospitals and orphanages. Advocates called it a humanitarian effort, and critics decried it as ripping children from their homeland.

Delahunt was adopted by Kati and William D. Delahunt, now a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. The couple tried to make their new daughter comfortable with her heritage, taking her to Lunar New Year events, buying her Asian dolls, introducing to her to another adopted Vietnamese girl, hopeful that the two would become friends.

She resisted. "The Vietnam War to me is exactly that -- it's history," she said. "I just wanted to be American."

She learned German -- her adoptive mother's native language -- and took summer trips to Germany. Her master's degree is in Spanish from Middlebury College in Vermont, her father's alma mater. After school, she moved to Washington and landed a public relations job specializing in Latin American issues.

Only then did she begin thinking about Vietnam.

"As you get older," she explained, "your history becomes more important."

Five years ago, Delahunt accepted an invitation to travel to Vietnam with a group of adoptees and officials from Holt International Children's Services, an Oregon adoption agency that placed many of the children from Operation Babylift.

This trip was dubbed a homecoming. It didn't feel that way.

After mastering two foreign languages, Delahunt thought she could learn a few Vietnamese phrases, but the unfamiliar tones overwhelmed her.

Everywhere, she saw young children. Some sold chewing gum; others held out empty plastic bowls.

Delahunt had seen poverty on trips to India and Chile, but this was different. "That could have been me," she said, shaking her head. "I could be in Vietnam on the streets right now."

What Delahunt found on her trip, she said, was a comfort with other Vietnamese Americans. After the trip, she attended a conference with other adoptees, and some became her close friends.