Last Airlift is the true story of the last Canadian airlift operation that left Saigon and arrived in Toronto on April 13, 1975. Son Thi Anh Tuyet was one of 57 babies and children on that flight. Based on personal interviews and enhanced with archive photos,Tuyet’s story of the Saigon orphanage and her flight to Canada is an emotional and suspenseful journey brought to life by the award-winning children’s author, Marsha Skrypuch.
Like the other children in the Saigon orphanage, Tuyet dreams of a family of her own. But she is one of the oldest, and polio has weakened her and left her with a limp. Nobody will adopt a girl like her. Instead, Tuyet cares for the babies and toddlers, hoping that if she continues to make herself useful, the nuns will let her stay.
One day in April, the babies and toddlers are packed into small boxes and frantically loaded into a van.The driver places Tuyet in the back of the van as well. As she and the younger children are taxied to the airport through streets filled with smoke, artillery fire and frenzied refugees trying to escape, Tuyet believes that her job is to look after the babies until they are airlifted to safety. But when the huge Hercules C-130 takes off from the burning city, Tuyet is not left behind after all. What will happen to her when she arrives in Canada? Will she be sent to an orphanage to look after new children, or will the people return her to Saigon to take her chances with the North’s invading forces?
Excerpt:Chapter One
Early April 1975
Tuyet could not remember a time before the orphanage.
She thought that all children lived together in a building with sleeping rooms, a play area, school, and chapel. She remembered sleeping together with the older girls on a wood-slat floor, without blannkets or pillows. She would wake up each morning with marks from the wood slats on her cheek.
Tuyet would clean her teeth using her finger and salt. Day and night she wore a pajama-like cotton top and drawstring pants. The nuns would give each child a newly laundered set of clothing every three days so so.
In the morning, she would line up with the other girls. One of the nuns would rip bread from a giant loaf and give a piece to each child. Her meals consisted of fish, rice, plain water. There weren’t enough chopsticks to go around, so they used their hands.
Reviews:on Cooperative Children’s Book Centre Choices 2013:
The last Canadian airlift to leave Saigon during the Vietnam War was on April 11, 1975. The plane carried 57 babies and children, along with rescue workers. Son The Anh Tuyet was one of the orphans on board. About nine years old at the time, she was experienced helping care for younger children and babies—something she did all the time at the orphanage where she’d lived. So perhaps it was no surprise that when she first met the Morris family in Toronto a few weeks later, she assumed the couple with three young children had picked her to be their helper, not their daughter. But they had chosen her to be their child, and in the coming weeks and months, as Tuyet adjusts to life in the West, she also begins to understand what it means to be part of a family, and loved unconditionally. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch never strays from Tuyet’s child-centered perspective in recounting her experiences. In an author’s note, Skrypuch describes interviewing Tuyet (obviously now an adult), who found that she remembered more and more of the past as she talked. Dialogue takes this narrative out of the category of pure nonfiction, but Tuyet’s story, with its occasional black-and-white illustrations, is no less affecting because of it. (Ages 9–14)
Children’s Book News wrote:
The last Canadian airlift operation to leave Saigon arrived in Toronto on April 13, 1975. Son Thi Anh Tuyet was one of 57 orphans on that flight. Based on personal interviews and enhanced with archive photos, Tuyet’s story of the Saigon orphan and her flight to Canada is an emotional and suspenseful journey.
Joanna Rudge Long on Horn Book wrote:
As the North Vietnamese entered Saigon, missionaries rushed to evacuate the most vulnerable orphans: healthy ones might find new homes, but “children with disabilities—like Tuyet—would be killed.” Tuyet, eight, lame from polio, has cared for babies for as long as she can remember. With her help, fifty or so of these tiny orphans are loaded, two to a box, for what proved to be the last such flight to Canada; once there, it is Tuyet who shows their new caregivers that the wailing infants awaiting adoption could be comforted by putting two in each crib, as they’d always been—an emotional need she shares, as her adoptive family realizes after Tuyet spends a sleepless night alone in her new bedroom. A concluding note describes the return of Tuyet’s memories during conversations with the author, whose third-person re-creation of these transitional months in 1975 makes vivid the uncertainties of confronting a new language, climate, and family. Tuyet’s initial misapprehensions are telling (those points of light in the Canadian sky aren’t bombs but stars), as is her cautious, unfailingly courteous approach to a life that includes such unfamiliar things as play and ample food. Fortunately, her adoptive family is not only well-meaning but loving, creative, and sensitive. An excellent first step on the ladder that leads to such fine immigrant tales as Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again (rev. 3/11). Illustrated with photos. Notes; further resources;index. Joanna Rudge Long, September 2012
Kirkus wrote:
“Skrypuch tells the story of the last Canadian airlift through the memories of one child, Son Thi Anh Tuyet. Nearly 8 years old, the sad-eyed girl on the cover had lived nearly all her life in a Catholic orphanage. With no warning, she and a number of the institution babies were taken away, placed on an airplane and flown to a new world. Tuyet’s memories provide poignant, specific details….In an afterword, the author describes her research, including personal interviews and newspaper accounts from the time. But Tuyet’s experience is her focus. It personalizes the babylift without sensationalizing it….Immediate and compelling, this moving refugee story deserves a wide audience.”
School Library Journal wrote:
Gr 3-6–Tuyet had little memory of her life before going to the orphanage where, at eight, she was one of the oldest children. She ate fish and rice, drank water, and could not remember ever seeing the sky. Her scars were from burns and injuries she could not remember, and polio left her leg weak. In April 1975, Tuyet’s life changed forever as she became part of the last Canadian airlift operation to leave Saigon. Along with 56 babies and toddlers, Tuyet was flown first to Hong Kong and then to Canada where she was adopted by a loving family, something she had never known. The author tells Tuyet’s story with respect and dignity, introducing readers to a brave girl caught up in the turbulent times of her country, her fears of leaving what she knew, and the joy of finding a new life. Archival and family photos are included throughout, as are a historical note explaining the circumstances surrounding the airlift and an author’s note with follow-up information about Tuyet. Her story will appeal to a broad range of reader. By Denise Moore, O’Gorman Junior High School, Sioux Falls, SD School Library Journal
