For adoptees
Start your search
You may be at the beginning or years in. Either way, you set the pace.
The Operation Babylift Collection holds records created by Friends For All Children and related agencies during the 1974 to 1975 evacuation and adoption of children from Vietnam. These include travel lists, agency correspondence, and personal files. We search them for you, under every name you have carried.
Before you begin
You do not need everything. Share what you have, and tell us what you do not know.
Every name you have carried
- Your Vietnamese or birth name, in every spelling and order you know
- Your nursery name, the name given to you at the nursery
- The name on your departure paperwork, if different
- Your adoptive name
We run these together, a practice we call the Two-Name Protocol, because any one name alone can lead to a dead end.
What helps the search
- The agency that placed you, if you know it
- The nursery or facility where you lived, if known
- Dates on your paperwork, including birth and departure
- Where you were placed or hospitalized on arrival in the United States, such as a hospital or city
- Any documents: letters, an alien card, a bracelet photo, adoption papers
How a search works
- You send the request form.Share your names, dates, and any documents. You can come back with more later.
- We search the transportation records.These are the travel and flight lists from the evacuation.
- We search the records transcribed so far.Transcription is ongoing, so a search today may find more than one last year.
- If you were placed through Friends For All Children, we search the adoptee index.Sister Mary Nelle Gage, who led the agency, may help fill in the blanks.
- We write back.Please allow 2 to 3 weeks for a response.
- Files are delivered with care.File deliveries are made quarterly or depending on schedule, through a facilitated session in person, by video, or as a guided written process. You are then offered connection to the Invisible Threads community, if you want it.
What to expect
Many of these documents contain personal information about you and about other people: birth families, adoptive parents, medical staff. Access is restricted under privacy and adoption laws, and every request is reviewed case by case.
- Records are shared only with verified individuals connected to the original adoption or caregiving event.
- Personal information belonging to other people may be redacted.
- Some records are incomplete, and some are permanently restricted.
- This archive is not an adoption agency and cannot guarantee access to full records.
- We will not post your information. If you share a document, it is used for your search.
Take care of yourself. A search can bring up a great deal, sometimes all at once. You can pause at any step. Adoptee-informed support is listed below, and the Invisible Threads community includes people who have walked the same road.
Adoptee Access & Reconnection Request Form
Please allow 2 to 3 weeks for a response. File deliveries are made quarterly or depending on schedule. You can also upload documents inside the form.
The form not loading? Open it on its own page, or write to records@operationbabylift.org.
While you wait
Other resources for your search
These organizations are independent of the archive. Using any of them is your choice, and a request here does not require it.
DNA and family search
- AncestryDNA: DNA matching and family trees
- MyHeritage DNA: DNA matching
- GEDmatch: matching across platforms
- 23andMe: DNA matching
- Con Tím Mẹ: a Vietnamese organization in Hue dedicated to reconnecting families
Legal and citizenship
- Adoptee Rights Law Center: citizenship documentation and deportation defense
- Immigrant Legal Resource Center: immigration legal aid
- USCIS: Form N-600, Application for Certificate of Citizenship
- BPSOS: Vietnamese community legal support
Vietnamese community organizations
Support
Adoptee-informed therapists are recommended through the Invisible Threads community. Write to devaki@operationbabylift.org and we will share what we know.
From the collection
Records, up close
