Father finds lost son after 32 years

The picture that helped Thanh Campbell and his father find each other

Nguyen Minh Thanh of Saigon has found his lost son, Thanh Campbell, a Vietnamese resident in Canada. They lost touch in 1975 and the son believed that he was an orphan until he discovered that he had a father and blood brothers in Vietnam. It was an article, “Vietnam, please wait for my return”, published by the Youth Newspaper on July 15, 2006 that gave the clues for the family reunion.

The lost child

Thanh Campbell could not remember how he was taken to Canada and all he knew, through his adopted parents, was that he and another 56 Vietnamese orphans were taken out of Saigon on board a military airplane on a chaotic day in April 1975 within the framework of Operation Babylift when he was only one year old.

By chance, Mr. Nguyen Minh Thanh, who is living in precinct 4, Ho Chi Minh City, got the newspaper with the article on Thanh Campbell and his photo.

The father was too shocked to utter a word after reading the article with information about Thanh and after studying his photo. The boy in the picture looked very much like him when he was young and immediately he thought of his lost child, whom he had been trying in vain to find for decades.

Having graduated from a teachers’ training college in 1964, Thanh had been teaching in Saigon for three years before being recruited to the Army following the order of the then Sai Gon administration. After serving in the Army, he resumed teaching in Saigon. During the war, life was so harsh and precarious that Thanh and his wife decided to send their three children, Minh Thuan, Minh Thien and Minh Thanh, to Can Giuoc orphanage, considering it the best way to protect them, without knowing that it was the last time they would see their youngest child.

Thanh’s family was so worried about the lost child, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. He might be among those who died in an air-crash a few minutes after a plane had taken off. They left no stone unturned to trace information of the lost son. He resorted to advertisements on TV and tried to get information from former members of the American Babylift delegations who returned to Vietnam in April 2005. The more they tried the more desperate they became because they could not fulfill the wish of the mother before she died of cancer to find the lost child. Later on, Thanh’s family was told by nuns’ at the orphanage that by mistake, Thanh was included in another infant group that was to be evacuated abroad while the two elder brothers were kept back because they were a little older. On that day, a copy of his birth certificate was tied to Thanh’s wrist.

Father and son identification

The father looks at his youngest son's birth certificate again

The elder Thanh said the fact that he had accidentally found his lost child after more than three decades was something arranged by fate.

The article in Youth Newspaper was really the water from a cool spring that revitalized the 70 year-old father’s hope. A day after reading the article, he came to the HQs of the newspaper to find out how to contact Thanh Campbell and at the same time, Thanh’s fourth child, who was born after the war, also contacted Thanh Campbell through his email address.

In an email to Youth Newspaper, Thanh Campbell admitted his strange feeling and wondered why his younger brother knew his secret of having his birth certificate tied to his wrist though he never leaked it out to anybody. What concerned him most was why he had been sent to the orphanage.

For more than three decades, Thanh Campbell and his friends in Canada had believed that he was an orphan and it seemed very hard for Thanh to accept the truth that he had a father and brothers in Vietnam.

Thanh Campbell’s doubt was removed when he received another copy of his birth certificate from home. It was exactly the same as the paper he had been carefully keeping. He immediately contacted Lab Express asking for a DNA test. The test was conducted in Dec. 2006 and Lab Express was also asked to carry out a DNA test on the father as well to ensure the genuineness and precision of the task.

“I love you Papa!”

The two weeks waiting for the results seemed a century for both the father and the son. On Jan. 8, 2007, Thanh Campbell was informed by Lab Express that Mr. Nguy?n Minh Thanh is his father.

In the first phone call to the father after 32 years, Thanh Campbell stammered “Con th??ng ba l?m!” in Vietnamese (“I love you very much Papa”) many times. He had to learn that sentence from his friend because he had never studied Vietnamese.

The father was too moved to hear his son’s shaking voice after 32 years. During the talk the son raised many questions about his late mother and enquired after the health of his father and brothers.

The fact that Thanh Campbell finally could be reunited with his family after more than three decades has lighted up hope for others with similar fates to have a happy ending one day.

Source: TT

Translated by Mai Huong