If their fathers could see them

The Bangkok Post December 15 1985

The Sunday Tribune May 18 1986

 

We’re walking through the dripping trees under my shared umbrella: P. J., the girl with fair hair from Korat and David, half in and half out of the driving monsoon rain.

 

We’re singing what we know of ‘We are the World’. My helpers peter out after the rousing chorus and leave me alone with the banal verses. The hard rain falls on stocked fishing ponds and dense jungle. I’m aware of the ironies and the sadness, because all these kids are Amerasian teenagers, born during the Vietnam War and because of it, when I was their age and half-cocking an ear to it all on the BBC. I’m remembering Jimi Hendrix bandanas, the mad purples and deep blues of them, and fresh-faced features assault-coursing through jungle such as this. I lived the Vietnam War on television, so had ample time and distance to cultivate the ironies. It seems years ago. For these kids it’s been their life.

 

But they appear unaware of the ironies. It’s summer camp – four days of singing, games, brainstorming and togetherness in the rainy season near Pattaya. We’re on the grounds of the Siam Country Club, a lush landscape of artificial lakes for weekend fishermen, dotted with cabins and hideaways from Bangkok. A hundred-odd kids from all over Thailand, mostly from the Northeast where US forces were based: Korat, Ubon, Udon, Nakhon Phanom. Names that must spark memories and nightmares in America.

What struck me initially were the faces. Some could be out of any high-school yearbook in the States. There’s a high proportion of Blacks. It’s a truism to say that war decimates populations. But it does so discriminatingly: the youngest and the best, the poorer sections of the community – those who couldn’t afford Canada or college. The black history of the Vietnam War has yet to be written. It is written in a manner in the body language of these kids. A sense of perfect rhythm that has survived such a long, roundabout journey of genes.

 

The camp has been organised and funded by the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, a trust set up by the writer, Nobel prizewinner and missionary. It has offices all over Southeast Asia, the recent theatres of American war. In Bangkok the Foundation is located on a leafy soi just off the chemical fog of Sathorn Road, in an unassuming white weatherboard house. I happened to call when Steve Rothstein, the outgoing director, was showing the new boss, Ed Powers, the ropes.

 

‘I’m going to take a year or two back in the US,’ said Steve. ‘I’d like to see what I can do in a follow-up programme for Thai kids who are in America.’

 

The Foundation looks after the welfare of Amerasian children and latterly Eurasian children as well – one outcome of the booming sex industry. It is an invaluable service that has grown out of war and the presence of a large number of ‘war babies’ in Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam.

 

‘There are some 30,000 Amerasian kids in Vietnam alone, and in Thailand, as far as we know, up on 7,000,’ says Steve. ‘This office has a duty towards those in Thailand, but obviously some from Vietnam find their way here, mostly through the holding centres. We had an office in Vietnam but were forced to leave. About 2,000 children of American parentage have left Vietnam since 1982. The Vietnamese don’t want them and they evidently have had a tough time.’

 

One pathetic consequence of the fall of Vietnam is the use – or abuse – made of Amerasian children to gain exit visas. Because they had automatic access to the US – and, unlike their counterparts in Thailand, could go accompanied – many were sold to prospective buyers as guarantors of entry to the States. The buyers would pose as parents or family until reaching America. Often the child would denounce his or her buyer on arrival. By then the deed had been done.

 

‘They were a kind of exit pass in Vietnam,’ said Steve, ‘but now it’s more difficult.’

 

Thailand has s a much more tolerant and easygoing attitude to these reminders of American presence. There is little discrimination – a bit of name-calling perhaps – and in most cases the children manage to fit in and become normal Thai citizens. Poverty is the overriding factor: fatherless and often from poor backgrounds, the knowledge that somewhere in America a rich father has forgotten them is a hard burden to bear.

Since 1982 the US has passed a bill enabling these limbo children to become American citizens. The hesitance of the Thai authorities in granting a similar status hasn’t helped the bureaucratic mess to sort itself out. A number of Amerasian children aren’t registered as having been born anywhere.

 

‘Children can now apply,’  emphasised Steve. ‘They must be able to prove US parentage, either with a birth certificate or some document. Appearance goes a long way to being proof, too. If there are sponsors in the US who will agree to support the child for five years, well and good. The appropriate authorities will in any case locate guardians. The child must go alone – which is a stumbling block for many of them. Leaving whatever family they have here. Leaving friends.’

 

Some ex-servicemen fathers in the US have contacted the Foundation, but unless there is concrete evidence it is difficult to prove parentage.

 

‘The whole area of responsibility is a delicate matter,’ admitted Steve. ‘Many fathers have remarried and settled down. Or didn’t know or care in the first place.’

 

A recent documentary on BBC television focused on the dilemma of fathers confronted with the fruit of their Vietnam years. There were scenes of extreme cruelty and vulgarity, dreams of the land of hope and plenty shattered.

 

‘Those who have gone to the States through the Foundation appear to be happy,’ said Steve. He is justifiably proud of the achievements over the years. The many smiling faces in the hundreds of photographs around the office testify to his hard work and dedication as a director.

 

‘There was one kid competing in the Olympics last year – for Thailand. And some of our kids are doing very well at universities in Thailand and in the States,’ he beamed.

 

Despite the continuous rain, spirits are high. This afternoon we have capsized boats, crawled through inner tubes, climbed trees and generally enjoyed ourselves. The closing ceremony in the Aula Maxima of the campsite – a bamboo awning with Space Invaders and table-tennis – is imminent.

 

Individuals from each group get up to express their feelings about the time we have spent together. The hundred-odd kids are spread in a ring, wearing peaked caps and t-shirts with the logo PSBF Camp ’85. Their faces are intense. A brainstorming session is in progress. One black kid sits cross-legged on the ground, a stitched America in bright yellow letters covering his back. Earlier there were sketches, dance routines, a pastiche ‘We Are the World’, but now there are tears here and there in the crowd as people realise how much fun and togetherness is coming to an end.

‘My father died in Vietnam. My mother went to the US when I was four. She hasn’t written for a long time. I live with my sister in Nakhon Phanom.’ He shows me a photograph he keeps of his mother. Suburban house in Anytown USA. Green felt beret and long Yoko Ono hair against the polished oak door. Cold expression. He doesn’t have a photograph of his father. ‘My stepfather didn’t love me. I want to be an air steward. That’s why I like to practise my English.’

 

Many of the other biographies are similar: broken homes, the promise of the good life overriding family ties, the ambiguous figure of the stepfather. And behind it all the backdrop of Vietnam, the human dimension colliding with something bigger, more frightening: the stomp of history, perhaps.

 

We started the camp with a religious ceremony – tying blessed white strings round each other’s wrists in the incensed dark, and offering garlands. The strings were talismans guiding spirits back to travellers. They were symbolic of shared ties. The closing ceremony is a large rope ringing us round. We’re singing 'goodbye, my friend, till we meet again,’ in Thai and English, as the binding rope gets tighter and everybody is crying: grown men, the gym instructor who had been up at five jogging with kids round the lake, the monitors, the shy ones who had hardly said anything in four days.

 

By lunchtime, bags are packed and drying clothes are picked off the bushes out of the hot sun which has appeared at last, late. Figures are out around the fish ponds, musing on benches. There’s a cluster at the Space Invaders, heckling its mechanical bleeps. A blue Frisbee slices the air of the Aula Maxima. Addresses are exchanged. White t-shirts are scrawled and promises to keep in touch cross the water.

It reminds me of summers spent away from home in the Gaeltacht, in Ireland, learning Irish. The same urgency of emotion let out for the first time ever. I was eleven, and their teenage fathers were listening to Doors songs on the radio and smoking pot, and experiencing the same intensity in a war far from home.

 

Over lunch the emotive scenes of the morning are defused and guitars come out for the bus ride back to Bangkok. Much has been achieved in four short, wet days. I get off into the haze of Sathorn Road and the hands stretch out from the bus window as it moves. If their fathers could see them, they would surely be proud.