Meeting Nguy?n Hoàng Kim Ph?ng (stolen child - Holt)

My Proud Sacrifice - Poems by Kevin Minh Allen

News & Information about Kevin Minh Allen's first book of poetry

Meeting Nguy?n Hoàng Kim Ph?ng

Many small, but no less significant, graces crossed my and my sister’s paths as we dipped our toes in the countless currents of life that coursed through Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. We both knew that by coming to the land of our birth questions of every nature would arise within ourselves and be asked by people we both knew and didn’t know based on our physical features and lack of Vietnamese language skills.

The one that will forever live on in my memory concerns a woman named Nguy?n Hoàng Kim Ph?ng. She worked at a restaurant (MZ Club, 56-56A Bui Thi Xuan St.) where we had decided to eat dinner one night. We chose this establishment mainly because of its close proximity to the hotel we were staying at; it was a couple minutes walk away and on the same side of the street as the hotel. Convenient.

We were seated near a piano, and shortly after we ordered drinks and food a pianist and violinist took their places and began to play some familiar and lively tunes. I noticed Hoàng walking by our table a couple times and smiling. She was listening to the musicians play and chatted with them in between songs. I didn’t know why at first, but she took a special interest in my sister and me and finally stopped by our table to ask how our food was and how we liked the restaurant.

Hoàng eventually asked us where we were from and what brought us to Saigon. My sister and I told her that we were born in Vietnam but grew up in the U.S. Like many Vietnamese before her, Hoàng was completely perplexed by how we did not know or speak Vietnamese, even though we had been born in Vietnam. I tried to explain to her that we were adopted as infants and taken…well, my explanation suddenly became beside the point because Hoàng revealed something to us that changed the whole tenor of the evening. I paid rapt attention to the story she unfolded about her brother who was taken out of Vietnam toward the end of the Vietnam/American War.

According to Hoàng, her baby brother (Nguyen Dinh Nam) was placed at the orphanage run by Holt International because his mother died after he was born and his father was left to take care of six children by himself. Their father was an amputee (leg), so the whole family was very poor. Thinking that their brother would be better taken care of at the orphanage until the family could take him back once their situation got better, there was no intention of leaving him at Holt International permanently and certainly no one in the family ever anticipated him being taken out of the orphanage at the end of the war and being put on a plane during Operation Babylift to be adopted to another family in a foreign country.

At this point in the story, Hoàng began crying a bit, and when she continued repeating that her family just wanted to know where the Holt International office was in Saigon so they could ask about her brother’s whereabouts, she then started sobbing, which she tried holding back as much as she could. She apologized profusely for her questions to us and her tears and eventually excused herself to go in the back of the restaurant.

The only way I could think of to help Hoàng and her family was to spread her story far and wide among other Vietnamese adoptees and especially to Holt International. Perhaps someone may recognize Nguyen Dinh Nam’s name or Holt International may still have some piece of information in its archives as to where he was sent and who adopted him.

So, Hoàng and I traded business cards and we hugged and I told her that I’d see what I could do to help her search for her missing brother.

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