Escape From Saigon

          In the book, Escape From Saigon, by Andrea Warren, I learned about the Vietnam War.  It was a hard time for Vietnamese people.  Millions of innocent humans were killed.  Many children were orphaned, like the child in this story.  I have learned a lot about the horrors and tragedies of the Vietnam War.  Escape from Saigon has helped me learn about the culture in Vietnam, too. 

          One example from the book tells about how a lot of people were killed during this war.  They died in battles and from bombs.  They died from hunger and lack of water.  They died for different reasons that were centered on one part of Vietnam not liking the other.  Many people died also from sickness in close areas.  In the orphanages, many children hadn’t been cared for and were sick or had missing body parts from bombs.

          Another example is that at orphanages, they had a lot of children.  It was sad because in this book, “Amerasian” children, who had American and Asian parents, almost never got adopted, especially if they were older.  This was because there were a lot of cute Vietnamese babies who people thought needed more help then older “Amerasian” children, though they were wrong.

          A lot of innocent people experienced the war, even if they weren’t involved.  Many were scared to leave their houses because they were afraid they would get shot.  They didn’t leave their houses to get food so they starved, although most stalls at the markets didn’t have someone to keep them, the owners didn’t leave their homes either.  This is one of the many tragedies of this war.

          When mothers learned about Project Baby Lift, a project to get all the children in a certain orphanage out of the city on a jumbo plane, they swarmed the streets to plead the people to take their children.  They didn’t take a lot of the children, though mothers pleaded for almost all day.  They were so desperate to get their children out of the danger of the city to the U.S.  All parents were sent away from the orphanage.  This was horrible to them because they knew that their children would most likely die.

          In Escape from Saigon, I learned about a war that took Vietnamese and American lives alike, perhaps other people too.  This was a time that was not too long ago.  People should learn about the bad times of this war that took a lot of lives.  

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This page last updated: 12/30/05.