By Parrot Newspaper 
Vietnam Babylift Survivor Searches for Birth Mother
Hoi An, Vietnam – Parrot Newspaper
Fifty years after she was airlifted from a crumbling Saigon in the twilight of the Vietnam War, Odile Dussart has come home—not to reclaim a past she remembers, but to find the mother whose face she has never seen.
She was just 11 months old when Operation Babylift swept her away from the chaos. Now 51, Odile stands in her quiet home in Hoi An, gazing out at endless rice fields, clutching little more than hope.
“I don’t know if she’s alive or gone,” she says softly. “But I need to know her story. I want to find her—even just to say thank you.”
Odile was one of over 3,000 children evacuated in Operation Babylift, a controversial U.S.-led airlift that relocated Vietnamese babies and toddlers to adoptive families across the West. Some were orphans, others simply swept up in the desperation of war. Odile was on the very first flight—one that ended in disaster.
A Flight That Changed Everything
On April 4, 1975, the U.S. Air Force’s C-5A Galaxy took off from Saigon with 314 people aboard. Minutes into the flight, the rear access door ripped off, and the plane crash-landed. 138 people died, including 78 children.
Odile was among the survivors.
“I had bruises on my head and back,” she recalls. “At 11 months, I was as small as a six-month-old.” She was treated in Saigon, sent briefly to San Francisco, then adopted by a French couple and raised in the Riviera town of Saint-Raphaël.
Unlike many, Odile doesn’t speak of the crash with bitterness.
“That moment was a non-event for me. I remember no sound, no smell, no vision. The victims were those who died, the soldiers who lived with PTSD, and the parents who waited for children who never came.”
Caught Between Two Worlds
Odile’s Vietnamese name is Bui Thi Thanh Khiet, but she grew up as a French citizen, a lawyer, a stranger in a land that never quite saw her as its own.
“All my life in France, I was seen as Asian—never fully French,” she says. “But now, living here, I feel something deeper. My thinking may be French, but my soul… my behaviour… is Vietnamese.”
She recently reclaimed Vietnamese citizenship. To her, it’s more than a legal status—it’s a return to a part of herself that was always missing.
“I’m grateful to be alive. Grateful to those who saved me. But something has always been incomplete.”
The Unfinished Search
Odile’s journey is not hers alone. James Ross Tung Dudas, another Babylift survivor, was three when he was taken from Vietnam. Now 53, he lives in New Jersey and has spent the last decade searching for his roots.
He recently traveled to Vung Tau, following a lead that could connect him to his birth mother. DNA results are pending.
“I’ve always wondered who they were, where I came from,” says Dudas, born Hoang Thanh Tung. “I grew up American, but my heart never stopped being Vietnamese.”
Both he and Odile know the odds of finding their birth families are slim. Many records were lost or destroyed. Names were changed. Time has erased the trail.
But neither has given up.
“I still have hope,” Odile says, her voice firm. “Even if I find nothing, the journey matters. I am finally where I belong.”
A War’s Shadow
This week, as Ho Chi Minh City prepares a grand commemoration marking 50 years since the war’s end, stories like Odile’s remind us that history doesn’t close with a celebration. It lingers in the quiet corners of identity, in the scars and questions left behind.
From a war that tore thousands of families apart, a daughter has come home—not to reclaim the past, but to complete her future.