Operation Babylift Collection

In April 1975, as Saigon fell and the War neared the end, President Gerald Ford launched Operation Babylift—a large-scale evacuation of over 3,000 Vietnamese children to adoptive families worldwide.The first flight, C-5A Galaxy, crashed shortly after takeoff—killing half the passengers, including many children and caregivers. Among the survivors were infants too young to remember, whose stories would be told not by themselves, but by headlines, broadcasts, and others for decades to come.

The Operation Babylift Collection is a living, evolving archive dedicated to preserving and discovering our own personal narratives by bringing together the fragmented pieces of our past into a discoverable, centralized platform that offers insight into the journeys of Vietnamese adoptees, and the experiences of caregivers, volunteers, veterans, journalists, and adoptive families who were part of Operation Babylift. It weaves our stories together, recognizing both our individual pasts and our shared history.

The files that had been sitting in storage for decades hold a history that we, as adoptees, have always known existed—but had never witnessed firsthand. I had never seen my name on the flight manifest of survivors from the C-5A crash. I had never seen the letter my mother wrote when she applied to adopt a child. That letter, that list—it actualized my existence in that place and time. I was there. See my name. It’s written right THERE.

The Operation Babylift Collection seeks to bridge the gap between official narratives and lived experience. It validates personal truth by pairing storysharing with documentation: flight manifests, agency records, government memos, personal files, and photographs—many never before released.

For more information: www.operationbabylift.org