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Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. He had a picture of his father, Sgt. Miller II, exchanging wedding vows with Jimmy's mother, Kim, who was pregnant with him at the time. He carries the picture in his wallet to this day.
Jimmy's father, James, retired from the U. Army in after a year career. In , he was sitting with his wife, Nancy, on a backyard swing at their North Carolina home, mourning the loss of his son from a previous marriage, James III, who had died of AIDS a few months earlier, when the telephone rang. On the line was Jimmy's sister, Trinh, calling from Spokane, and in typically direct Vietnamese fashion, before even saying hello, she asked, "Are you my brother's father? She repeated the question, saying she had tracked him down with the help of a letter bearing a Fayetteville postmark he had written Kim years earlier.
She gave him Jimmy's telephone number.
James called his son ten minutes later, but mispronounced his Vietnamese name—Nhat Tung—and Jimmy, who had spent four years looking for his father, politely told the caller he had the wrong number and hung up. His father called back. Is your aunt Phuong Dung, the famous singer? There was a pause as James caught his breath. I am your dad. Over the next two years, the Millers crossed the country several times to spend weeks with Jimmy, who, like many Amerasians, had taken his father's name.
But you know the only thing that boy ever asked for? It was for unconditional fatherly love. That's all he ever wanted. He said that there had been times when he had questioned the wisdom of his efforts. He mentioned the instances of fraud, the Amerasians who hadn't adjusted to their new lives, the fathers who had rejected their sons and daughters.
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But wait, I said, that's old news. I told him about Jimmy Miller and about Saran Bynum, an Amerasian who is the office manager for actress-singer Queen Latifah and runs her own jewelry business. I consider myself blessed to be alive. And I told him about the Amerasians who got off welfare and are giving voice to the once-forgotten children of a distant war.
The cavernous Chinese restaurant in a San Jose mall where Amerasians gathered for their gala filled quickly.
Children of the Vietnam War | Travel | Smithsonian
Plastic flowers adorned each table and there were golden dragons on the walls. Next to an American flag stood the flag of South Vietnam, a country that has not existed for 34 years. An honor guard of five former South Vietnamese servicemen marched smartly to the front of the room. Le Tho, a former lieutenant who had spent 11 years in a re-education camp, called them to attention as a scratchy recording sounded the national anthems of the United States and South Vietnam.
Some in the audience wept when the guest of honor, Tran Ngoc Dung, was introduced. Dung, her husband and six children had arrived in the United States just two weeks earlier, having left Vietnam thanks to the Homecoming Act, which remains in force but receives few applications these days. The Trans were farmers and spoke no English. A rough road lay ahead, but, Dung said, "This is like a dream I've been living for 30 years. I asked some Amerasians if they were expecting Le Van Minh, who lived not far away in a two-bedroom house, to come to the gala.
They had never heard of Minh. I called Minh, now a man of 37, with a wife from Vietnam and two children, 12 and 4. Among the relatives he brought to the United States is the mother who threw him out of the house 27 years ago. Minh uses crutches and a wheelchair to get around his home and a specially equipped Toyota to crisscross the neighborhoods where he distributes newspapers.
Vietnam: The Real War – in pictures
He usually rises shortly after midnight and doesn't finish his route until 8 a. He says he's too busy for any spare-time activities but hopes to learn how to barbecue one day. He doesn't think much about his past life as a beggar in the streets of Saigon. I asked him if he thought life had given him a fair shake.
David Lamb wrote about Singapore in the September issue.
- Children of the Vietnam War.
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- Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most.
Catherine Karnow , born and raised in Hong Kong, has photographed extensively in Vietnam. An earlier version of this article said that Jimmy Miller served in the military for 35 years. He served for 30 years. We apologize for the error. Subscribe or Give a Gift. Humans Reached the Roof of the World 40, Years. Learning to Speak Latino. Science Age of Humans. A New Treatment for Blindness. America's Most Revolutionary Artist. At the Smithsonian Visit. Looking at Artists Looking at Themselves.
Photos Submit to Our Contest. Photo of the Day. Subscribe Top Menu Current Issue. Vietnamese refugees run for a rescue helicopter to evacuate them to safety. Sons and daughters of the Vietnam conflict claim roots on two continents. Jimmy Miller with his two girls in Spokane reunited with his father, retired Army Sgt. Thousands of mixed-parentage children, who were left behind when Americans departed Vietnam, were raised as orphans. Minh was brought to the United States where he currently lives with his wife and children.
I recognized the eyes because I see them every day in another photograph, one that sits at my bedside. Because the young man in the photograph is my father. I didn't want to write about my father. And I never would have possessed the courage to write about something as broad and grand and male as war. I had no experience of war, but I had a father who had experienced war and as I learned more about what that meant it felt less foreign.
I grew up in peacetime.
If you hit a golf ball from our front door it would land in a cornfield in one direction and in a pasture with horses in the other. When asked why he'd ended up in such a place, my father would say he liked the fact that he could "do something" in his days but still encounter a deer on the way home. We had a pool, and before he dove in he'd remind you how many laps it took to cross the Bosphorus and weren't we lazy that we only swam in pools.
I remember dancing with him at family weddings; he was always the best dancer, and he taught me the fox trot. I remember running with him in the woods behind our house, and how he made the runs seem short by telling stories. We would run at night, when he got home from work at a law firm "downtown. And when we hit our pre-designated midpoint, he would signal the upcoming return home with a loud "ready about; hard a lee. He could hoist a large sail on his own.
He loved the ocean. He drove my siblings and me to school most mornings when he wasn't traveling. We rotated days for deciding what to do on the ride. When we could choose, we chose radio, but when it was his turn to choose, he chose stories, usually Greek myths.
We knew the Minotaur before we knew Spiderman. The Minotaur was a favorite myth of mine because I liked that it was a love story, in the end. I liked the image Ariadne in the Labyrinth. He tried to interest me in The Iliad , but I had no interest. And he was gentle.