Seems like there is no record of our key contribution and as the Team Lead, my guys left it all out on the Fort Smith Airport Tarmac. Wake Island is a tiny island in Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean, located 2/3 of the way from Honolulu to Guam, best known for its role in World War II. on May 3rd of 1975. I looked for her, but, never found her. I felt more human around children, and after I shot the first few obligatory rolls of cute girls lying at the beach, I concentrated mainly on children. The Vietnamese refugee airlift, the largest aerial evacuation in history, encompassed a series of overlapping operations that are difficult to separate: Babylift, New Life, Frequent Wind, and New Arrivals. It is an unorganized United States territory, with no permanent residents, just members of the U.S. military and civilian contractors who manage the facility. In our private hells that emerged once everyone else had staggered off to their rooms, we were a forlorn and morose lot, living there because the money was good and the world was at bay. Sorry, no sex in that one. RME11H0A - Dec. 12, 1977 - Vietnamese refugees from the Trawler song be 12 arrive at Darwin - Australia. We helped with the luggage if needed and assisted if help was needed with the young or elderly or even wounded. Within a week or so, the population of the island bulged to nearly 8000. The helicopters shuttled between the besieged capital and U.S. ships in the South China Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS Midway. Love is in the Air, Along with Some Other Pollutants, Proudly hosted by - melraytechnologies.com. The door is unlocked, the light is on, the teapot is ready to boil. Even cold water on Wake is fairly warm and the darkroom had no refrigeration facilities, so the film was developed at about 78-80 degrees F in Kodak Microdol-X developer, diluted 1:3. Based in these sad results, I would have great difficulty recommending Ilford products to anyone, nor would I recommend my manner of storage, which consisted, for the first ten years, of benign neglect. He is also the person who sicced the Ford Library on me, trying, as they do, to grub freebees for the National Archives. We could smell something rotten without details, he had shrapnel in his legs and the wounds were infected. The book will encompass both years, though the 1975 events will take up most of the pages. According to The Evening News, the first baby born to a Vietnamese refugee was born at 2:45 a.m. May 30. We live in Independence, Missouri, and I have recently retired from teaching Philosophy at the Blue River Campus of MCC -- the Metropolitan Community College of Kansas City. Between April 29 and May 9, MAC C141s and C130s transported more than 31,000 Vietnamese refugees from the Philippines to Guam. On April 4, a C-5 Galaxy from the 60th Military Airlift Wing, which had just delivered howitzers to Tan Son Nhut AB in Saigon, loaded more than 300 passengersincluding at least 230 orphansfor a flight to the Philippines. It has been especially effective on the maladies known as tennis elbow, Schumann's Hand, water on the knee, Oprah's Butt, tin ear, fickle finger, pork shoulder, and chicken scratchings. Wake Island has never been known to have a set population. Marine gunners let them close to 4,500 yards before their 5-inch naval guns opened fire. Miraculously, more than half of the passengers survived, including 149 orphans. The jazz photos were treated to ICE technology to eliminate scratches and physical imperfections. Later in his brief time as a student there, Jake brought home his music theory book and said that "some guy" had come into class that Saturday and talked about music and other "stuff." Except for the 1978 shots of Dexter Gordon, Custom Color Corporation, of Kansas City, Missouri, processed all the Kansas City Jazz photographs. We divided up and worked 12-hrs shifts. During the spring of 1975, MAC transported 8,556 tons of cargo to the camps, including beds, mattresses, blankets, tents, rations, evaporated milk, baby food, and insecticides. They were officially refugees. Eddie Baker: pianist, bandleader, educator, uncle and father, also helped me identify some of the musicians that appear on the Kansas City Jazz pages. In August 2006, Chunying and I motored up to Chicago for a post-honeymoon and to visit the National Vietnam Veteran's Art Museum and donated two prints to them. It was busy for us and quite challenging, but you were welcomed with the loving hearts that we have for all people in need in times such as that was. No sooner had we settled into our quarters when SSMSgt rounded us all up and ordered us to the chow hall where we met some of the nicest group of civilian personnel. If only the world were like that. Tien and Anh Vu are the parents of Vincent Vu (USMA '17), but their story begins in separate communities in the Republic of Vietnam. here were 2 great jazz periods in the history of Kansas City. 4.18.Vietnam War refugees and Operation New Life [Kaunting pagbabago o pagkakabago ] Sa tagsibol ng 1975 ang populasyon ng Wake Island ay binubuo ng 251 militar, gobyerno at sibilyan na mga tauhan ng kontrata, na ang pangunahing misyon ay upang mapanatili ang paliparan bilang Mid-Pacific emergency runway. Others sought to escape because they did not want to live under a communist system. After a few phone conversations, he flew out to Kansas City during my Spring Break and we had two full days of an interview. It may have been a measure of how much I missed my own two children, Kim and Jake, as they stayed in Oklahoma with their mother after our divorce in Los Angeles. Of 662 helicopter sorties, the Air Force flew 82. But when I moved to Kansas City in June of 1978, I landed in a city that was reaching the end of its second great jazz period. However, as a pediatrician at Tachikawa AFB, we received the second plane load of children following that first crash. Adult survivors were frightened that wed remove survivors from the crashed plane on this second flight and hid them in various places on the plane when it landed at Yokota AFB. The ocean depth surrounding Wake is profound. ), and the crossover group, Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Two C130 missions evacuated Vietnamese refugees from Vung Tau on the coast, but other flights took escapees out of Saigon. They swarmed the refugee boat, raping and killing the women, tossing their bodies and their murdered children out to sea. Within a few hours of shooting them, I processed the rolls in a photo darkroom on Wake at the rear of the bar known as the Drifter's Reef. It can be found by following the link on the left side of this page, "Blount (blunt) Interview. : Australia has refused a demand from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to return the Song be 12 beat, and what it described as all the ''pirates'' aboard, Many small boats with Vietnamese refugees have sailed into Darwin since the Saigon regime fall 2 1/2 years ago, the number so far is 742. The Military Airlift Command airlifted 1,794 Babylift passengers. She ate some white fish and rice. Bill, another peds , did a review of all children and removed 4 of them to be sent to me at Tachi hospital. And that's just what my mother said. south glens falls school tax bills mozart: violin concerto 4 analysis mozart: violin concerto 4 analysis More than 130,000 Vietnamese refugees traveled from the Pacific island camps to the United States in the spring and summer of 1975. The month after I arrived, still living in a shabby Holiday Inn by the Downtown Airport, I read that Dexter Gordon was playing a free concert in a park in south Kansas City. Refugees. I saw things there I never saw again and did things there with my brothers and sisters of Medical Corps that I was never trained to do. In addition, this Web site was on display at the Kansas City Museum, 3218 Gladstone Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri, through a dedicated computer through August 7 of 2005, in conjunction with the Smithsonian exhibition entitled: Vietnam: Journey of the Heart. This site literally would not exist without his help and encouragement. Bill identified a child with chicken pox, the Japanese authorities on the plane thought he said Small Pox and therefore refused to allow future flights to land from Vietnam onto Japanese soil. In recent years, Nikon has aggressively priced themselves out of my league. Airlift could not transport all of the refugees who sought to escape as communist forces took over South Vietnam in the desperate spring of 1975. Let's look at how it changed and evolved over many games. I've kept six or seven of my personal favorites to hang on the walls of our living room. Though a flood in my basement in 1979 destroyed nearly all the color slides and negatives from that time, I luckily had the black and white negatives upstairs at the time for the purpose of classifying and cataloguing, and they were spared. I will be overjoyed if you do these things. Poor Rex. Tam, Hanh, Dung, Ti, Xuan Mai: every Christmas I imagine you under my tree. per adult (price varies by group size) All the pictures on this site, except as noted, were scanned on Nikon Cool Scan film scanner, set to achieve an output definition of 300 dpi, with an output size of approximately 810 inches. When we landed the plane taxied up and stopped and he told us to grab our tools and bags and get into a Air National Guard truck that was waiting for us, so we did. In a few minutes the A/C commander came down into the cargo bay and told us that we had been diverted to Fort Smith Arkansas and nothing else. The last Vietnamese evacuation airlift operation, New Arrivals, transported tens of thousands of refugees from temporary camps on Pacific Ocean islands to the United States. To pull off those very complex MULTIPLE airlift operations spread out through the pacific is beyond impressive. Dont know the whole story but am familiar with the baby lift at the beginning. from. That number was reduced to about 175 the following year when funds for the island's support were cut back. It was signed by Dizzy Gillespie. The variety in quality of the pictures you see here is mainly the result of film degradation. Merely permitting kitty to play upon the keyboard while visiting this site will remove all traces of feline distemper as well as the often undiagnosed but potentially deadly Cat Attitude. He was a real nice guy. God Bless, richard. Biden Turned Back on Vietnamese Refugees Stephen Fox: Despite Biden's objections and from other leading Democrats, U.S. military evacuated 130,000+ Vietnamese refugees in the immediate. 4 15 AB Wg and little did we any of us realize what was awaiting us and at least for myself, personally, it was a life altering experience to say the least. But that's not all. In April 1975, communist forces took over South Vietnam and Cambodia (Kampuchea). I may have been the only person ever to get Chris Woelk to don a tuxedo of his own free will. Thousands of people who sought escape were left behind, but the airlift did carry tens of thousands to freedom. I'd still be using it happily had I not dropped it in Swan Creek, in southern Missouri, while canoeing in the summer of 1979. I live with my wife, the former Fengzhu Song (often called Sufei) of Beijing, China. Date 10 May 1975 Source United States Immigration and Naturalization Service Author Unknown authorUnknown author Camera location 19 18 26.88 N, 166 38 33.44 E View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap The island was designed to shelter 4,500 refugees, but by January 1979, a total of 18,000 refugees were housed there, and by June the number swelled to 40,000, making it the most heavily populated place on earth. hanks to the generosity and photographic skills of Luke LeTourneau, 50 custom prints from this site now exist, matted and framed for exhibition. There were 161 New Life C130 missions, which transported 20,834 passengers from Saigon to the Philippines the last week in April. Part of her kind acquiescence may have had to do with the justifiable guilt she felt for having attached the scanner (a Nikon, lest we forget) to some sort of barbaric Macintosh pseudo-computer. Her name was Tet. I was stationed at Little Rock AFB after the airlift operation, but the stories that were told made me proud to be an American and a sister to all people in the world. PRAISE GOD! Within a few years, the music budget of Parks and Recreation was slashed, and the great sounds that came from our parks each summer had changed. As South Vietnam collapsed, many fled the country on ships and aircraft. I formerly taught meteorology for the National Weather Service Training Center, in Kansas City, and founded and published the now defunct wine newsletter, Hair of the Dog. Share. Leave a LIKE and a comment. It began in the 1920s and continued through the next 25-30 years. The unincorporated U.S. territory is now home to 100 non-permanent residents, some military, some . I've lived a full and interesting life since we met, but not as full and interesting as it could have been with you in it. June 22, 2022; Posted by camber gauge oreillys; 22 . Mr. Spade, I was just shy of 4 years old when I arrived in Ft Chaffee, Arkansas as a Vietnamese refugee along with my parents and 3 siblings. When Guam filled with refugees, a newer processing camp on Wake Island went into operation. According to my father, we flew on an Air America C-47 transport to U Tapao, Thailand, spending 2 nights there and then boarding an Air America C-141 Starlifter (or a C-130) to Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. Chau Mai it was me and my Air Force Blue Ribbon Team that blocked your planes in and helped you off at Fort He also has a Nikon Cool Scan 2900 dpi scanner and an Epson printer, and what he was able to do with them amazed me. Though Julian's hand would never be mistaken for a medieval manuscript, we decided to exchange audio cassettes instead. ESPECIALLY OUR FREEDOMS These people lost EVERYTHING! It was put together from the initial dribs and drabs, as well as the final avalanche of material provided him, by my former colleague and great guy, Kevin Gunn. Linda Thong's story ends happily for her and her family, suggesting a new chapter to the American immigrant success story. Although she is more accustomed to saying that I, consistent with all other males, crawl on my belly like a reptile. Other than palm trees, Wake has little vegetation and nearly no topsoil. I returned them and found he is an anthropologist working for Albion Environmental, in Santa Cruz, California. One was a little girl supposedly destined for France. Commercial planes under contract to MAC flew 349 other flights for the operation. My friend Kiemhue, who, with her husband and sister, came through Wake in June and July of 1975, has done that for her daughters and it will provide an important link between her past and their future. Wake Island is also thought to be within the outer engagement umbrella of the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) interceptors based in Fort Greely, Alaska, which are designed to counter. While she is a charming and sensitive person, it dawned on me that she was the substitute for all those people I knew on Wake Island that I'm hoping this site will reach. You read the number of flight and over 25,000 refugees in about 30 days. Delivered primarily by C141s of the 437th and 438th Military Airlift Wings, most cargo went to the main refugee camps on Guam and Wake. The 196 flights comprised 61 by C141s and 135 by C130s. I can hardly remember some of you in these pictures, as I am sure the bearded, curly-headed man behind the camera is also a fading question mark. The island sheltered as many as 50,430 at a time. There, they spent three months. My unit came from Ft Meade, MD. Beginning in the fall of 2004, Luke began making beautiful 13.5 X 20 inch enlargements of frames I selected both for their artistic merit and their ability to present a representative overview of life in the camp. So, late this spring, we had a long-distance tape exchange and I was able to listen to myself as I was 26 years ago. Director Tran Thanh's newest drama film, "The House of No Man" ("Nha Ba Nu"), arrives in the U.S. this Friday across 60 theaters. You all helped us get on our feet to start a life anew here. The U.S. military never tried to retake the atoll but cut it off from resupply and subjected it to periodic naval bombardments and air raids. The second, Operation New Life, ran from April 23- November 1, 1975, airlifting over 100,000 evacuees and refugees from South Vietnam. The Wake Island black and white pictures were shot on Ilford HP4 (ASA 400) film, bulk-loaded from 100 foot rolls, Kodak Tri-X (ASA 400) in 20 or 36 exposure rolls, and an occasional roll of Agfa or Ansco film that I found lying around. I can never repay the debt for your service in fighting for our freedom in Vietnam 40 plus years ago. I long to hear from you, long to hear of you, long to know that life in this country has been good to you, long to see pictures of your children and grandchildren, long to grow old with you as my dearest friends. Within just a couple hundred feet of the reef, depths are measured in thousands of feet. The main modes of arrival for the Vietnamese have shifted over the years, from refugee protection to family reunification. Visit www.wakeisland.ws for some stunning aerial photographs of the island. Out of 120 people, only 15 men survived. The lenses I used were: 20 mm f:4 Auto-Nikkor, 24 mm f:2.8 Auto-Nikkor, 35 mm f:2 Auto-Nikkor, 50 mm f:1.4 Auto-Nikkor, 55 mm f:3.5 Micro-Nikkor, 85 mm f:1.8 Auto-Nikkor, 105 mm f: 2.5 Auto-Nikkor, 200 mm f:4 Auto-Nikkor, and 500 mm f:8 Reflex-Nikkor. The Japanese garrisoned Wake with more than 4,000 troops and erected extensive fortifications to protect them from attack. Between April 4 and 28, C141 Starlifters from the 60th, 62d, 63d, 437th, and 438th Military Airlift Wings airlifted refugees out by day, while C130s from the 374th and 314th Tactical Airlift Wings evacuated Vietnamese by night. It was at my wedding, in 1984, where he was best man. And failure to provide compensation implies lawyers and tactical nuclear weapons. wake island vietnamese refugees. I lost a friend on the C5 that crashed after explosive decompression. While on a fishing boat with 50 others, including 33 adults and 18 children, the group got lost in the South China Sea. It consists of three separate islands: Wake, the center one, Wilkes, the westernmost, and Peale, the northernmost. Some Vietnamese riding on Boeing 747s landed at Little Rock AFB and transferred to smaller military aircraft that could land at Fort Smith. It is a domain having com extension. It was the most heart wrenching yet rewarding month Ive ever spent in my life. Prior to World War II, Wake's status was a matter of controversy, and Japan landed there often in the 19th Century to kill, and eventually extinguish, an indigenous bird, the rail, for its decorative feathers. $230.00. The 60th, 62d, 63d, 436th, 437th, and 438th Military Airlift Wings and the 314th Tac Alft Wg employed C141s, C130s, and C5s to airlift refugees from the Philippines, Guam, and Wake through Hickam, Norton, Travis, and McChord AFBs to processing centers at Eglin AFB, Florida; Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; Camp Pendleton, California; and Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. The Vietnamese evacuation airlift operations demonstrated the utility of a single theater airlift manager, the effectiveness of integrating strategic and tactical airlift resources, and above all, the critical contribution of ground support personnel to mission success. It was most prominently used in the 1930s as a landing site for the Pan American World Airways Clippers, which flew between North America and Asia, with frequent fueling and crew change stops. That story must have made the Knight-Ridder wire circuit and ended up in Laredo, as well as other places perhaps. For the month they were on Wake, my life revolved them, was kept afloat by their love and good spirits. When Operation New Life concluded, it had compiled a record of 201 C141 flights and 174 C130 sorties. wake island vietnamese refugees750 watt step through electric bike. At that time, the island was supervised by the U.S. Air Force. Kathleen Henrickson, my colleague at Blue River Community College, was extremely helpful and patient with the disruption to her life my scanning caused. English: Vietnamese refugees on Wake Island await processing by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service personnel in May 1975. Though theyd managed to get on board a destroyer because of the massive number of boat people clambering to board our ships a decision was made to hold of medical treatment until they arrived at port Wake island. We were immediately placed into our proper quarters rooms which were about 12x12 NO AC (lol) and water was rationed 24hr on / 24 hrs off I say all that to Thank ALL My Brothers and Sisters who served In Country In Nam who didnt have the luxuries we had or those serving today in Middle East THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR STRENGTH, YOUR ENDURANCE, AND YOUR PERSERVERANCE and OF COURSE FOR YOUR SERVICE! He had just cross trained into the C5 loadmaster program from the recyp engine shop across from the prop shop where I worked. A significant number of those 1.5 generation refugees were Vietnamese Amerasians, born from Vietnamese women and American servicemen in South Vietnam before coming to the US under the Amerasian Homecoming Act in 1987. Dennis Traynor tried to fly the disabled plane back to Saigon. Though there was no TV on the island at the time and with only the sanitized AFRTS broadcasts to substitute for news, we were aware that the war in Vietnam was winding down and Americans were evacuating. Long story short I wanted to take her home with me back to Hawaii and I think our SMSgt knew it, because he had me go for chow and leave the girl with them. Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. are at ages where they're beginning to develop dementia. Needless to say, I have never been to Laredo, Texas, all the DNA evidence and scurrilous writings on bathroom walls to the contrary. Do you think your pets are left out? The evening was planned to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of The War. If, through this site, I can locate any of you who were on the island and whom I photographed, I would love for us to meet again and trade memories. uring parts of 4 months in 1975, the obscure island of Wake became a temporary residence and processing center for tens of thousands of Vietnamese citizens fleeing their country at the end of that tragic war. They scaled the compound's fencing, pushing back against US. Posted 2022610 by 2022610 by But in October of 2002, during the week when my wife and I were splitting up and I was moving out, I received an email from Derek (originally Du~ng) Hoang, brother and cousin to those names mentioned above. However, I already knew him by inference, since earlier I had enrolled my reluctant son in the Charlie Parker Memorial Academy, which Eddie had founded and was running. Posted On 7, 2022. The very first Vietnamese refugees to reach Australia were the orphan infants evacuated by Operation Babylift in the weeks before the fall of Saigon in April 1975. My baby sister also called Whin was only 1 month old. At first she wouldnt talk with anyone but, and I believe it was GOD who ordained and orchestrated it she felt comfortable with me Tet looked so much like my own little girl in Hawaii. The local Air National Guard Unit hosted you until the Army from Fort Chaffee was ready to take you to the camp. And permission requires compensation. The girl weighed 6 pounds 6 ounces and automatically became a U.S. citizen. Julian had been a pal/rival during college in Los Angeles, and when I exiled myself to Wake Island (as he saw it) we began a correspondence. The closest land to Wake is the Marshall Island of Bikini, 500 nautical miles to the south. The island was previously used as a meeting ground between U.S. President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas MacArthur. At the time, I was single and unaware he was the uncle of Mata Baker, the woman who would become my second wife in 1984, and my second ex-wife in 2003. It's like trying to work out Fermat's Last Theorem on an abacus. Other than palm trees, Wake has little vegetation and nearly no topsoil. I tried to make their stay at Clark comfortable. After a lot of delay on the part of the U.S. government, she was finally granted the visa and we married in September of 2014. Amazingly enough, we have remained in contact and have saved the tapes. ^ Nealon Mark Shelley, "The Invisible Vietnamese: Ethnic Community and Assimilation in Milwaukee," (Ph.D . None of the film, after processing, has ever been stored in a temperature and/or humidity controlled environment. After that, it served as a refugee camp for Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon. After reading this site, I now realize that the military aircraft folks are the unsung heroes of that war. It is honorable soldiers like you and your departed friend Donny along with so many kind and compassionate American people here in the States who took us in with open arms that make this country so great because of its generosity. However, communication with them has been difficult and the process of appraising the negatives has also bogged down. The first to leave were several thousand South Vietnamese military and government officials who departed with US forces in 1975. ake is located at 19 degrees, 17 minutes north latitude, and 166 degrees, 39 minutes east longitude in the Pacific Ocean. When I finally write the book about these two years, Julian Catalano will receive more thanks than he deserves; it's only fair that he receives less than he deserves in this venue. They take up an obscene number of frames in my Wake Island photography, and I don't begrudge a one of them. Which doesn't mean that I don't appreciate her for her own individuality and uniqueness; after all, because of her I now have another gray hair! The arrival of 125,000 Vietnamese refugees to the United States in 1975 was among the most dramatic evacuations undertaken by the U.S. government, matched only recently by the chaotic flights from Afghanistan following the U.S. military's withdrawal.