DNA being used to help mixed race children ID their military fathers

[Melt71]

I have recently become interested in organisations that are helping the children of western servicemen identify their roots and heritage. This sprang from my interest in adoption (with two adult SE Asian adoptees in the family) and my personal interest in Asian social settings, as I have lived a lot of my career in SE Asia.

It seems to me that DNA is really going to open up a world of answers in coming years, for these people who often have zero information.

 

[Melt71]

A documentary about the "Children of Dust" - Vietnamese children fathered by western soldiers, and the use of DNA to help them learn their heritage and identities.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obOK-yZUsk
"A Man's 50-Year Search for His Father After the Vietnam War"

I will report my post so WS can blur the link under the new moderation rules, since this is an unapproved source

 

[keek]

I have recently become interested in organisations that are helping the children of western servicemen identify their roots and heritage. This sprang from my interest in adoption (with two adult SE Asian adoptees in the family) and my personal interest in Asian social settings, as I have lived a lot of my career in SE Asia.

It seems to me that DNA is really going to open up a world of answers in coming years, for these people who often have zero information.

I worked in a classroom with an Amerasian teen. One day he came to me and said he wants to find his father, he had picture, a black and white of a man, shirtless by a boat, Vietnam war smaller boat. I so wanted to help him, as I was very aware and socially involved during that war. I asked him where he got the pix to start, he said his mother, who was also in America along with a sister, teens. I asked his father's name and all he knew was 'Joe'. He knew nothing else nor his mother he said. My heart broke. Thousands and thousands of the children of servicemen serving in Vietnam and area. Thank you for doing what you are doing. This student was short but stocky which also was a give away to me of his father's build perhaps, the stockiness and maybe even his swaggering and bravado like ways of being. One time he came to class angry, and we talked, he said he found his sister was going into Boston and was a prostitute like his mother. I don't know how he came to think his mother was, back in Vietnam, was. Yes it would be looked at that as it was survival, money for food. This was in the mid 80's of course. Oh, the man in the picture was crouching and had dark sunglasses on and blurry, so it was not clear to me how he looked or his stature, also a cap on his head, in order to tell if he was a stocky build to begin with, or was it a picture of his father at all, but he had it.

 

[Melt71]

The Leah and Blair Slog - an Australian man, his Filipina wife, with an American genealogist friend. They help Filipinos with foreign fathers find their roots. Some amazing reunions and dreadful rejections, but at least some concrete information for people who had very little.

www.youtube.com/channel/UCgwEFP-fZYrTqOrELlxTMRg