Info
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 Viet Cong’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.
The orphanage included boys and younger children — and lots of babies. At the age of eight, Tuyet was one of the oldest. She was expected to help out with the younger ones without being asked. It was her duty, but she didn’t mind.
Tuyet would see the older boys in class, when they played together in the indoor courtyard, and at chapel three times a day. The priest who said Mass was the only man she saw in the building, except for the soldiers.
The children stayed inside at all times; it was not safe outside. Tuyet could not remember ever seeing the sky above her head.
When she heard the whop-whop-whop of helicopters, Tuyet would hid. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was that she was afraid of, but when she put her fingers to her scalp, she could feel dents. She had a large burn scar on her back and another long scar under her chin. She couldn’t remember when the injuries happend, but it must have been before the orphanage.
Tuyet remembered the big door opening and American soldiers coming in with stuffed toys, spinning tops, and hard candy. The other children would crowd around the men, competing for attention and gifts. But Tuyet would hide. She wasn’t afraid of the Americans, but she had polio. Her left ankle was so weak that she walked on her heel. In order to move forward, she had to push her left knee with her left hand. She had calluses on her knee, because she pushed it so often. She was afraid that if the soldiers saw her foot and weak leg, they would take her to the hospital. And then the doctors would cut her foot open and try to fix it….
Reviews
Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices 2013
Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk. Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War. U.S. edition: Pajama Press, 2012.99 pages (trade 978-0-9869495-4-8, $17.95)
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)
Canadian Children’s Book News, Summer 2012: 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.
Horn Book: 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
“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.” Kirkus, Feb 2012
SKRYPUCH, Marsha Forchuk. Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War. 120p. photos. further reading. index. Web sites. CIP. Pajama. 2012. RTE $17.95. ISBN 978-0-9869495-4-8. LC 20119054221.
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
Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War. By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. 2012. 120p. illus. Pajama, $17.95 (9780986949548). 959.704. Gr. 4-8.
After years of being kept indoors in a South Vietnamese orphanage, suffering from polio, eating only fish and rice, never playing with toys, and sleeping on the floor in cramped quarters, eight-year-old Tuyet’s life changed forever in April 1975. As Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces, she and other children were saved on the last Canadian airlift to leave the city. Tuyet’s remarkable true story recounts the heroic rescue on a plane bigger than her orphanage, with babies hurriedly placed in cardboard boxes and an unknown future for all. With new foods, her own bed, eating with a fork, using a toothbrush (instead of her fingers and some salt), walking on grass (instead of rice paddies), and learning that the lights in the nighttime sky are stars instead of bombs, it’s Tuyet’s adjustment to a foreign land and an adopted family that proves most fascinating. Historical and author’s notes provide backstory and information on the research process, while black-and-white photographs from the time period heighten the drama.–Angela Leeper, Booklist.
From BookDragon:
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is one of those mega-award-winning Canadian authors (with more than a dozen titles) who hasn’t crossed over our shared border (just yet!) with the same success. She’s best known for her historical novels for younger readers about what must be one of the most difficult subjects ever – children and war. Her latest, which debuted far north last fall, hits U.S. shelves next week (March already!). Airliftis Skrypuch’s first narrative nonfiction, the true story of Son Thi Anh Tuyet and her last days in her native Vietnam and her first days with her Canadian family.
Tuyet can’t remember life before she came to live in the Saigon orphanage with all the children, babies, and nuns. Her only memory of “outside” are occasional visits of a woman with a young boy, who may or may not have been her mother and brother. “‘After a while, they stopped coming.’”
On April 11, 1975, Tuyet is frantically packed into the back of a van with babies and toddlers strapped into makeshift boxes headed to the airport. She is one of 57 children on what will turn out to be the last Canadian airlift operation to save orphans from a war-torn Saigon on the verge of collapse. As an older child of 8 with a leg weakened by polio, Tuyet is convinced she’s been brought only to help care for the younger children; as long as she remains useful, perhaps she will not be sent back to the orphanage.
Her remarkable journey – filled with unfamiliar faces, words she cannot understand, a future that seems so uncertain – lands her with a family of her own. “‘You are my daughter,’” her new mother assures her even before she can understand the words, “‘Not my helper.’” “Grass … swing … play,” her new father teaches her. And “‘sister,’” her new siblings call her with comforting hugs and kisses.
Enhanced with documents and a surprising number of photographs, Airlift is a touching, multi-layered experience. The strength of Skrypuch’s storytelling shows strongest in the smallest details: Tuyet’s wonder at discovering that stars are real things in the sky, her knowing better than the adults that to quiet the screaming babies is to place them close together, her doubt about “dads … [who] didn’t seem very real [as] she had never actually seen one.”
In the ending “Author’s Note,” Skrypuch explains how her initially intended novel became Tuyet’s narrative: ” … I was going to piece together a story of one orphan based on the experiences of many. But as I recreated these experiences from my research, an interesting thing happened. In small flashes, Tuyet bagan to remember more. … When Last Airlift was complete, Tuyet was overwhelmed by the fact that it was, in fact, her own story that had been reclaimed.”
Terry Hong BookDragon Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program http://bookdragon.si.edu/ http://www.facebook.com/sibookdragon @SIBookDragon
Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
In Last Airlift, Marsha Skrypuch gives a voice to the experience of Vietnamese orphan Son Thi Anh Tuyet. Tuyet was one of 57 babies and children awaiting adoption in an orphanage in the closing days of the Vietnam War. At eight, Tuyet is older than the other orphans; she’s a girl; and she limps due to a bout with polio. It is the latter that makes Tuyet certain that she will be left behind when a transport arrives to airlift the orphans to safety as the enemy captures Saigon.
But Tuyet is not left behind and she is not taken onboard to mind the babies, as she thinks. Life has a great surprise in store for her — the warm and loving Morris family. The Morris’s have already adopted two other children as well as giving birth to one of their own. One gets the sense that the entire family has a heart the size of the great outdoors. Their generosity makes the difference between a joy-filled life and a sorrowful one for young Tuyet, and for the adult who now lives in the author’s hometown of Brantford, Ontario.
Skrypuch’s prose is intimate and compelling, the many personal touches make the story come alive. It takes a while for Tuyet to get her head around the fact that she belongs to a family now and it is no longer her job to take care of the others. When she first arrives, she sleeps on the floor because she isn’t used to sleeping in her own room on her very own bed. The younger children in the family invite her into their room and into their lives, in the same way as their parents, Dorothy and John Morris. Monica Kulling, Goodreads.
Last Airlift is based on personal interviews conducted by the author with Tuyet. Both dialogue and many wonderful photographs enliven the story. Young readers will find Last Airlift suspenseful and interesting. It will take them to a time and place they may not have heard of, but which will resonate for them through Tuyet’s longing for a family to call her own.
Helen Norrie‘s Winnipeg Free Pressreview
Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
When the Americans pull out of Saigon in April 1975, many babies are rescued from the orphanage where eight-year-old Tuyet has lived for years. The orphanage is to be abandoned and the children left alone.
But Tuyet had polio and walks with a limp; she doesn’t expect to be chosen to go to a foreign country.
Ontario-based Skrypuch, who has written a number of award-winning books for young people, tells the true story of how this little girl is transported to Toronto and finds a loving home with a Canadian family. She makes us feel Tuyet’s fears, confusion and loneliness as she adjusts to her new home. Her book uses actual photographs of Tuyet and her family.
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Jocelyn Reekie‘s Canadian Materials review
Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Highly recommended
Fans of Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s books will know her most recurring themes are the effects of war on children and her young protagonists’ struggles to find family and home in the wake of it. In her first nonfiction YA title, Skrypuch explores these areas of human ferocity and need once again, but this time readers experience the story through the eyes of Son Thi Anh Tuyet, the girl who actually lived it.
Rather than using the first-person point of view that is common to memoir, Skypuch has settled on a third-person narrative to tell Tuyet’s story. Here, the choice serves to echo some of the isolation and estrangement Tuyet feels, while the real and telling details obtained by the close collaboration between the author and the now-adult Tuyet pull the reader into the emotional upheaval the child Tuyet has to deal with every day.
It is 1975, and Tuyet is eight-years-old. She is housed in an orphanage in Saigon, South Vietnam. She can’t recall a time before she lived there. Inside the orphanage, she can hear helicopters and airplanes, and bombs going off. But she can’t see them because the children are not allowed to go outside, ever. Outside, the Vietnam War is going on.
Then, in April, Saigon falls to the Viet Cong, and Tuyet is thrust headlong into a journey she does not understand and of which she is even more afraid than she had been of the war and her life in the orphanage.
In the world the eight-year-old knows, only perfect children are adopted or kept alive. Tuyet is imperfect. Polio has ruined her left leg and foot. So, she has been vigilant to find ways to make herself useful enough that the nuns who run the orphanage have let her stay and have given her food. But now she is removed from the relative safety of the system she has so carefully worked out. She does not know where she’s going, or why, or what will happen when she gets there.
On each leg of the long and exhausting journey, there are new challenges and terrors Tuyet must overcome. Young readers will find themselves riding an emotional roller coaster with her as she is taken away by strangers who speak a language unintelligible to her and put aboard a van, and then an airplane filled with screaming babies. Readers will learn what she endures as she loses everything she knows, or attaches to, including the only two friends she has ever had. Nor does her ordeal end when the airplane touches down in a foreign land called Canada. But along the way, her courage and resourcefulness allow her, and her readers, to carry on.
Overall, the 24 black and white illustrations serve to increase readers’ understanding of Tuyet’s journey as she experienced it. The tanks (ill. 2 1) and the photos of the babies (ill. 3 1) and the children (ill. 4 1) inside the plane give readers a clear sense of urgency and exhausting nature of the airlift rescue scheme, while photos of Tuyet, including her arrival in Toronto (ill. 4 4), and the Morris family photo (ill. 6 2) clearly show the strain and sorrow suffered by the little girl and her clinging to the man she is still afraid might send her back to her war torn country. In the end, readers also clearly see a transformation taking place (ill. 10 1 with Linh and ill. 10 2).
Some of the illustrations caused a disruption in the flow of Tuyet’s story and might have been better placed in the endnotes. Examples are: the pilot (ill. 4 3), which shows a calm looking man readers have not gotten to know, and the care workers with other children (5 1), which lifts readers out of Tuyet’s story.
Documents, such as the birth certificate (1 1), and the adoption order (6 1), which, as it’s placed, gives away the future and reduces the tension the author is trying hard to maintain, might also be better in the endnotes.
The author’s endnotes serve to clarify another sticking point for this reader, which was that apparently neither the nuns at the orphanage nor any of the adults Tuyet met during the journey who spoke her language (and there were some) took time to sit down with the terrified girl and explain what was happening. But there is a credible explanation for that blank spot. The historical note brings readers up-to-date and lays the facts of why Tuyet’s journey was so necessary on the line.
Last Airlift is the story of an heroic deed, of one young girl’s courage and resourcefulness when she most needs it, and of the ending she could not foresee.
Highly Recommended.
Jocelyn Reekie is a writer, editor and publisher in Campbell River, BC.
Her Life With Books review:
Before I begin this review proper, let me take a quick moment to talk about the act of weeping and how it affects my opinion of books that I read. Let’s start with the dissent. If a book makes the reader cry, that is an interaction between the text and that particular, specific reader. One book cannot make all readers cry; therefore tear-jerking is an unstable, unscientific measure of a book’s worth. Moreover, the reader is the true variable here, so the act of crying while reading says much more about the reader’s fragile emotional state than the text’s ability to bring out emotions. Moreover-moreover, champions of literature have worked very hard to legitimize literature as a valid field of interest and study, moving away from theories where books are judged by their intangible, inscrutable, dare I say, magical ability to evoke emotion in the reader. Moreover-moreover-moreover, moving away from relating emotion and literature is especially important when examining and discussing books for children, because children’s literature is still only marginally accepted as something worth studying. Also, children’s literature stirs up a lot of emotions in most people – nostalgia, bad memories from English class, hatred, etc – so it’s important to counter that tendency.
That being said, this book made me cry. This book made me cry like a little girl. And despite everything I just said up there, I think that means something. Not a big something, but a something.
Last Airlift is a young child’s account of her own adoption in the 1960s. Tuyet lived in an orphanage in Vietnam until she was eight years old, where she went to school, slept with hundreds of other children on the floor, and cared for the many babies left orphaned by the Vietnam War. For years, she watched the other children leave, never to return, but polio had crippled her leg, so she didn’t think she would ever be one of them.
Let that sink in for a second: she knew she would never be loved or have a family and was okay with that WHEN SHE WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD.
Luckily for Tuyet, though, an adoption group would make one last airlift from Vietnam to Canada, and Tuyet was chosen to come along, and she was adopted. This book is slim, sparsely narrated, and describes just the few weeks of the adoption process and into her new home. This is not an autobiography, but you can tell that the author has close ties to Tuyet, conducting extensive interviews or just having conversations; the attention to Tuyet’s perspective is sensitive, spot on, and perfect. Nothing terribly exciting happens to Tuyet, the suspense is minimal, the most tense moments involve car sickness and hiding food at the dinner table. Unassuming. Quiet.
But yet, as I neared the 100th page, tears just rolled down my cheeks. Maybe tears don’t make a book any good, but if you can get make me cry with such few words, such mundane subject matter, without resorting to melodrama or Nicholas Sparks bullshit and without any plot whatsoever? Kudos to you!
Canlit for Little Canadians review:
When the Americans joined to support the government of South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover, they could not have guessed that the fall of Saigon in 1975 would compel them, among others, to participate in frenetic evacuations of military personnel and civilians. Most surprising were the targeted efforts, by the U.S., Canada, Australia and France, to ensure that orphaned children were not left behind to face either death or indoctrination with communism. Because of the escalating attacks by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, it was imminent that flight by air would soon be impossible. As such, the rescue efforts involving both private and military transport would be seen as daring and urgent, especially for a child.
Eight-year-old Son Thi Anh Tuyet knows nothing of the machinations of the Vietnam War except the relentless pounding of bombs and the presence of soldiers. Her only memories are of life in the orphanage (with random visits from a woman and a boy) and helping to care for the countless infants. Last Airlift is Tuyet’s true story, relating to her exodus and deliverance to a Canadian home for adoption. Her recollections of the disquiet of war, coupled with her perception of herself as unadoptable, because of her polio stricken left foot and leg, imbue the events of her journey with the colour that is uniquely Tuyet.
From her spartan existence at the orphanage to the white Volkswagen van that takes Tuyet and countless babies (in boxes) through the turmoil of the streets to the fenced airfield, Tuyet relies only on what she knows and what she can see, believing her purpose is to be useful in the care of the infants. When another child, Linh, joins the orphans, Tuyet learns that the foreigners are speaking English and that, since she cannot communicate with them, “No” is the best answer to give. Through their numerous flights and eventual arrival in Toronto, Tuyet is flooded with new experiences, from seeing herself in a photograph for the first time (Did she really wear her sadness on her face for all to see? Tuyet asks herself; pg. 43), to wearing underwear, and to being gifted a doll and later a stuffed animal. Even after she meets Mom and Dad and their daughters, Beth and Lara, Tuyet is still convinced she would be going with them only to help care for the girls and a Vietnamese toddler, Aaron, who was being adopted. How Tuyet is able to see past her impaired foot and her orphanage experiences to become a sister and a daughter is a testament to the unconditional love of a family who saw past the qualities Tuyet believed defined her.
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch mentions in her notes that she had initially intended for Last Airlift to be a piece of historical fiction with the main character as a composite of experiences of many orphans. However, as Marsha Skrypuch pursued her historical research relentlessly, as she always does (see, for example, Making Bombs for Hitler, Scholastic Canada, 2012, and Stolen Child, Scholastic Canada, 2010), the real Tuyet recalled more details about her story, until the author recognized the scope was appropriate for a piece of non-fiction. Surprisingly, readers will find that Last Airlift still follows like a fictionalized account for the reason that, as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. (Okay, not always.) It seems unimaginable that a child, who had felt disconnected from those who were able, from those who were adoptable and from those who welcomed the soldiers who visited the orphanage with candies and toys, be plunged into chaotic circumstances directed by those who look and speak differently from her, into surreal vehicles, and to follow customs unfamiliar to her. It would be a story of speculative fiction, except that it isn’t. Tuyet becomes a heroine of her own story, using her fortitude, observations, and humanity to navigate the new territories outside of the orphanage and to make herself fit in.
by Helen Kubiw, April 9, 2012
Children’s Book News review, Spring 2012
Non-fiction / Vietnam 1975 / Operation “Babylift” History / Orphans / Adoption / Disability / Courage
Thought-provoking, heartrending and inspirational, author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s first non-fiction book chronicles one woman’s account of a little-known piece of Canadian history: the Ontario government-sponsored Operation “Babylift.”
In April 1975, South Vietnamese orphans were airlifted from Saigon and flown to Ontario where they were adopted by Canadian families. This military maneuver saved interracial babies (with American blood) and disabled children from being killed by the Viet Cong. Written from the perspective of eight-year-old Tuyet, who is crippled from polio, the book gives the reader vivid insight into life in a Saigon orphanage where children never see the sky and subsist amidst a soundtrack of warfare. Tuyet’s story reveals not only the privations and misplacement caused by war but the assumptions made by well-meaning people about the desirability of Western customs and middle-class values. Plentiful food, her own room and her first family initially cause Tuyet mistrust, discomfort and even terror.
This simply written but masterfully perceptive story of human resilience and courage belongs on every school and public library shelf. Although it could be read aloud to Grade 3 students and independently by Grades 4 to 8 students (e.g., for social studies or language units), the narrative easily captures an adult. Forchuk Skrypuch, who has received numerous awards for her historical novels, enriches this slender book with photos and official documents. Historical and author’s notes, detailing relevant background to Tuyet’s plight and the author’s research methods, make engaging additions alongside a list of further resources and an index.
Aliki Tryphonopoulos
From Ten Stories Up, May 18, 2012:
Tuyet used to dream of being adopted. But the orphanage in Saigon is full of perfect babies and younger children. Who would ever want an older girl who limps? Tuyet is resigned to caring for the babies, hoping that she will be allowed to stay if she continues to make herself useful. But then, in the closing days of the Vietnam War, everything changes. The city of Saigon is invaded and no one is safe. Tuyet and fifty-six other orphans are put on an airplane bound for Canada.
Tuyet finds a good friend in Linh, another refugee on the flight, who shares her hopes and fears on the long journey. Once they arrive in their new country, the babies, the younger children, and finally Linh are adopted, leaving Tuyet alone and frightened. If no one claims her, will she be allowed to earn her keep caring for other people’s children? Or will she be lucky, like Linh, and find a new family?
That would make a wonderful story, even if it were completely made up. But it’s not. Last Airlift is 100% nonfiction, and was written from extensive interviews Skrypuch conducted with Tuyet, her Canadian family, and many others involved in “Operation Babylift” at the end of the Vietnam war. The book is filled with copies of documents and heart-wrenching period photographs. At the same time, it reads like a novel, with characters and dialogue, bringing the experience of a young refugee vividly to life.
My favorite things about this book:
1) It’s about a period of history that’s relatively under-represented in children’s literature.
2) It shows that Canadian culture is as strange to others as theirs is to us, via Tuyet’s responses to her strange new world.
3) I can’t stop staring at the photo of Tuyet on the cover. The expression on her face cuts right through me. (For contrast, check out the photo of grown-up Tuyet in the Author’s Note).
Highly recommended to history fans, native North Americans interested in other cultures, and kids who love survival stories. Lindsey Carmichael
From Apples with Many Seeds:
This narrative recounts 8 year-old Tuyet’s evacuation from Saigon in 1975 as it was being invaded by Communist North Vietnamese. The experience must have been terrifying for the little girl as she and several babies are whisked away from their orphanage, stuffed in an over crowded van that pushes through crowds of people looking for their own ways of escape, until it reaches a military airfield. There, she and the babies (placed in boxes) are loaded onto a Hercules aircraft that would soon be filled with children. There’s a photo that shows how the boxed babies were secured with long straps that looped around several boxes at a time.
The author conveys the desperate, rushed and tense atmosphere. We too feel claustrophobic as the door of the airplane shuts and the heat and smell closes in around us and Tuyet. Everyone seems kind to Tuyet but she has no understanding of why things are happening to her. Was she selected to help with the babies like she did at the orphanage or because she has one weak ankle and foot, the result of polio? Where is she going? What will happen to her once she arrives?
Eventually, she arrives in Toronto. Again everyone is kind but no-one explains what is to happen next. Her new friend, Linh thinks that they will be adopted by Canadian families but Tuyet is unsure if this will be her fate. In Vietnam only healthy children were adopted, not children like her with a physical impediment. But within a few days, a family does come for Tuyet who can’t believe her good fortune and initially thinks the family wants her to work for them, to help care for their other children. This is not the case, of course and we learn how she settles into her new and often confusing, life.
Told in the third person, there is a remote element to the story that keeps us from emotionally connecting to Tuyet. It is easy to imagine how frightening and incomprehensible the whole event must have been but the ‘voice’ of the book has a distant quality to it. In the author’s note, Skrypuch mentions that Tuyet began to remember more of her experience as she told her story which may have contributed to this feeling of being a little removed from the story.
However, the story is fascinating. Being Canadian, I think of the Vietnam War as an American war. Growing up during the 70s, even in small town Alberta, there were many ‘boat people’ settling into our schools and communities but I didn’t really know specific stories. Film, TV, and media usually depicted the American situation. I’ve seen footage of Vietnamese people desperately trying to get onto to aircraft as they were leaving Saigon. I hadn’t realized that Canada had much involvement.
A sequel has been published, One Step At a Time, that continues Tuyet’s story as she undergoes treatment for her foot and ankle. I too will continue with Tuyet’s story.
Recommended for grades 3 to 8.
We Have It: Staff Reviews
“Last Airlift” (A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War), ; Pajama Press Inc., 2011, catalog number J 959.7043 SKRYPUCH; and “One Step at a Time” (A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way), Pajama Press, Inc., 2012, catalog number J 618.927 SKRYPUCH; both by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.
Though shelved in different areas (the first with Vietnam history and the second with disability experience), these two books are about the continuous story of Son Thi Anh Tuyet.
Eight-year-old Tuyet could not remember a time before the orphanage or before the war. She survived polio with a painfully deformed left leg and foot, and tried to prove her worth by caring for any orphanage babies in need.
In April 1975, just before the North Vietnamese army took over Saigon, Tuyet and 56 other orphans were bundled into a huge American airplane and chaotically evacuated to Canada. Surviving the next few weeks with the help of a new friend named Linh, Tuyet navigated through a confusing, alien culture and eventually ended up being adopted by a generous Canadian family that included one biological child and two other adopted children.
The story is told in third person from Tuyet’s point of view, and conveys powerfully her fear, uncertainty, and resilience. The writing style is deceptively simple, which may unfortunately turn away some adult readers, but will be attractive to younger readers. This is a poignant, heartfelt, and worthwhile read.
Reviewed by Dana McMurray
