Documentary on Amerasian children of war in Vietnam to be shown this month

A special documentary on Amerasian children of the war in Vietnam will be aired on national broadcaster Vietnam Television’s VTV1 channel next weekend.

The 60-minute film, “Nhung dua con cua cuoc chien” (The Children of War), is scheduled to be on air at 8:10 pm on April 25.

It narrates the sad stories of Amerasian children who were born during wartime in Vietnam.

Most of the children have had to live a hard, poor life. They were abandoned by their birth parents but always desire to find them.

“It looks like Amerasian children are being punished by God, although we are all guiltless,” said Son, who lives in Maine, a state in the New England region of the northeastern U.S.

As a homeless man, Son earns his living by collecting scrap metal and receiving his monthly grant from the U.S. government. His only dream is to come back to Vietnam as living in the U.S. is “cold and lonely.”

Bach Tuyet, another Amerasian child who is now a medical research assistant at a university in Washington D.C., said her birth father refused to accept her because she is only a “consequence” of war.

The four-member production team spent one year and a half researching, contacting the characters, and filming in both Vietnam and the U.S.

The severe weather in the U.S. went under -10 to -20 degrees Celsius sometime and froze some filming equipment while director Le Quynh Tu suffered from frostbite.

“That made us understand the toughness and loneliness that those Amerasian children have to face there,” Tu said.

The documentary also includes interviews with U.S. politicians about the issue as well as rare scenes depicting a meeting between former Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Co Thach and U.S. Senators Robert Mrazek and Tom Ridge in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in 1986.

Mrazek and Ridge are the founders of the Amerasian Homecoming Act, an Act of U.S. Congress giving preferential immigration status to children in Vietnam born of U.S. fathers. It was written in 1987, passed in 1988, and implemented in 1989.

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