Presidio Dialogues: A Legal Challenge to Operation Babylift | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

During Operation Babylift, a class action lawsuit was filed to investigate the legality of U.S. adoptions of Vietnamese children. Nguyen Da Yen v. Kissinger was one of the most visible, documented, and far-reaching challenges to Operation Babylift. Yet it remains largely absent from the history of that event.

Dana Sachs, author of The Life We Were Given, will talk with a panel of participants involved in the lawsuit and the volunteer effort at the Presidio.

This program is part of the Operation Babylift: Perspectives and Legacies program series. The exhibition is open until 7 pm on this evening. It is co-curated by the Presidio Trust and the Adoption Museum Project.

• Dana Sachs – moderator

In 2010, Dana Sachs published The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam, the result of a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship that allowed her to conduct extensive research in Vietnam. She first traveled to Vietnam in 1990 and has been visiting the country and writing about it ever since. The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam is her memoir about her experiences living in Hanoi in the 1990s, and If You Lived Here is a novel about a friendship between an American woman and a Vietnamese woman. She has collaborated with Vietnamese writers and artists on many other projects, including collections of Vietnamese short stories, short fiction and folktales. She also made the documentary Which Way is East with her sister, filmmaker Lynne Sachs. Dana’s journalistic articles and essays on Vietnam have appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, The International Herald Tribune, Travel and Leisure Family and The Huffington Post. She lives with her family in North Carolina.

• Tom Miller – panelist

In April 1975, Tom Miller began working as a volunteer attorney assisting in the class action lawsuit, Nguyen Da Yen v. Kissinger. He also assisted in individual cases representing Vietnamese families seeking the return of their children in his role as Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance. Prior to Operation Babylift, Tom helped build and operate the Center for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Saigon, which treated thousands of war-injured children and taught Vietnamese surgeons. The Center continues today as a National Center. He also worked to expand UNICEF’s capacity in all of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. When the American War ended, Tom assisted in obtaining the release in Vietnam of political prisoners and more recently, established the Vietnam Green Building Council, which is affiliated with the World Green Building Council, and provides guidelines with respect to energy efficient building in Vietnam. He has been involved in numerous other humanitarian projects through the non-profit www.greencitiesfund.org.

• Michael M. Howe – panelist

In April 1975, Mike Howe was asked to help form a team that would organize volunteers to assist with receiving and caring for the Vietnamese infants and children who arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area through Operation Babylift. At that time, Mike was the Dean of the College of Professional Studies at the University of San Francisco and the President of the Bay Area Health Planning Council (BAHPC). Mike is currently the Executive Director of the RP Group, the research and planning group for California Community Colleges. He has worked in the social sector for 50 years, doing everything from leading community foundations and becoming a tenured university faculty member to building grassroots social change initiatives.

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