Rescuer, war orphan reunite 40 years later

Sitting in a folding chair at the Vietnamese American Association of New Mexico’s office Wednesday evening, Tran, a slight man with piercing dark eyes, says he now thinks of the old man as an angel sent to guard the tiny treasure wrapped inside his non la, the tattered straw hat he clung to so tightly.

“I can’t go on, so I give you this baby,” the exhausted man told Tran, a second lieutenant in the Vietnamese Marines.

Tran’s orders were to help refugees fleeing the city of Quang Tri to the relative safety of Hue, and to blow up the bridge before the advancing Viet Cong could cross.

“Please help save this baby’s life,” the man implored, handing the baby girl to a mystified Tran.

Former South Vietnamese Marine 2nd Lt. Bao Tran, center, shares a laugh during an interview Wednesday at the Vietnamese American Association of New Mexico offices in Albuquerque.(Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal)

As the convoy moved out, the man told Tran he had seen the baby’s mother on the side of the road, and that the baby was trying to nurse from her breast. When he realized that the woman was dead, he took the baby, knowing she could not survive on her own.

As the trucks rolled along, Tran, only 22 at the time, stuck his finger in water and let the baby suck it from his finger.

“That was all I could think of to keep her from crying,” Tran , who speaks little English, said through interpreter Troy Gilchrist. “I could tell she was very hungry.”

Uncertain what to do with an orphaned infant amid the chaos of war, Tran was soon directed to get the baby to an orphanage. A female soldier accompanying Tran told him it was his responsibility to give the baby a name before he turned her over to the orphanage.

He named her Tran Thi Ngoc Bich, giving the baby his surname and a first name that began with the letter B, just as his does. The name, the interpreter said, loosely translates to “precious pearl.”

Tran carried the baby to Sacred Heart Orphanage in Hue, where he left his tiny ward with caring nuns. Because the orphanage was being overwhelmed with displaced children, the nuns assigned each child an identification number. Tran’s tiny “pearl” became Baby 899.

“It was a heartbreaking scene,” Tran recalled. “My mission as a soldier was to rescue my fellow countrymen, so I felt I did that. I was still very young. I did not know a lot about babies and children. But I realized this was just a baby, and I needed to save her.”

When Tran left the baby in May 1972, North Vietnamese forces had turned the war to their favor and were advancing ever southward.

Tran had hoped to visit the orphanage soon to check on the baby, but in the chaotic final months of he war, he was never able to do so.

“I just lost touch completely with her,” he said.

After the last U.S. troops left in January 1973, South Vietnam’s resistance crumbled, though its remaining forces battled to the end.

In 1975, Tran was imprisoned in one of the Communist regime’s “re-education” camps, where he remained for six years. Like most former South Vietnamese soldiers, Tran was prevented from working legally, so he became a pedal-cart driver in Saigon, eking out a meager living with his wife and growing family.

In 1994, he and his family were allowed to emigrate to the United States and settled in among Albuquerque’s close-knit Vietnamese community.

But, he said, he always wondered what happened to his “precious pearl.”

A military brat grows up

Haunted by the destruction he witnessed while serving in Vietnam, Air Force Tech Sgt. James L. Mitchell and his grade-school teacher wife, Lucy, adopted a Vietnamese baby in 1972, naming her Kim Mitchell.

James Mitchell spent 23 years in the Air Force, serving briefly at Cannon Air Force Base. When he retired in 1979, the family moved to a farm in northern Wisconsin, where Kim and her adopted younger brother, Paul, grew up.

Her father often hinted that the Air Force might be a career path Kim should consider.

“Ever since third grade, my dad would mention things that he thought I might be interested in,” Kim said by phone Thursday from a business trip in California. “But in third grade, I was just sort of, ‘OK that’s good.’ ” Having developed an affinity for military life, Kim attended the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I., before being accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Just days before she was scheduled to start at Annapolis in 1991, her father was killed by a lightning strike at the farm. Kim delayed going to the Academy for a year to be with her mother, but grew even more determined to follow her father’s footsteps into a military career.

She graduated from the Academy in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering and became a surface warfare officer, serving aboard various naval warships and completing numerous assignments from Washington, D.C., to Bahrain. Her last active duty assignment was as deputy director for the Office of Warrior and Family Support in the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Kim retired after 17 years in the Navy and is now deputy director of the Staff Sgt. Donnie D. Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Community Services, a Washington-based agency that helps military personnel, veterans and their families obtain needed services and resources as they transition back to civilian life.

Like most adopted kids, Kim sometimes wondered about her past.

“The only thing I really knew prior to the past few months, was that I was adopted from the orphanage in Da Nang that was run by the nuns, and then brought to the states,” she said.

She also knew her Vietnamese name, because it was printed on her passport when she was adopted and brought to the United States.

“I’d always felt that I needed to go to Vietnam and see it for myself, because it is part of my past,” Kim said. “I needed to meet the people and to see the country.”

Back to Da Nang

In August 2011, she did exactly that, accompanied by three close friends.

“They knew I was interested in Vietnam, and for my 40th birthday, we went,” she said.

The group spent five days in Vietnam, splitting their time in Saigon, Hanoi and Da Nang.

Her friends secretly arranged a visit to the orphanage, which had moved from Hue to Da Nang, and had learned that one of the nuns who had been there in 1972, known as Sister Mary, was still there.

The group met Sister Mary and Sister Theresa, who checked the orphanage records during their visit. The record had been painstakingly reconstructed by the nuns after the Communist government had destroyed them. Sister Theresa found the name Tran Thi Ngoc Bich in the books, though in slightly different order that Kim remembered them.

“That was the first time that I had ever had proof that I had been there,” Kim said. “It was a watershed moment for me.”

The group later visited the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, where a public affairs officer wrote a news release about Kim.

Several news outlets picked up and expanded the story, which in August found its way to a Vietnamese-language magazine — and into Bao Tran’s hands.

“In the article it said her name was Kimberly Mitchell, but it also said her Vietnamese name was Ngoc Bich, and that she did not know who had named her,” Tran said at Wednesday’s interview.

“I realized that that was the very girl I had named,” he said. “I knew it was her.”

Knowing the baby girl was probably born in early 1972 or late 1971, Kim’s adoption date also matched.

Tran enlisted the help of local insurance agent Le Dam Sharpe to find Kim Mitchell. Using the Internet and other sources — including her brother-in-law in the Navy — Sharpe finally connected with Kim last August.

The two exchanged emails for months, connecting the dots and ensuring to everyone’s satisfaction that Kim and Tran’s precious pearl were one and the same.

“I was very moved, and very happy to hear that she made it to America and that she has had a good life,” Tran said. “I really, really wanted to meet her.”

Today, he will.

Retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kimberly Mitchell and former Vietnamese Marine 2nd Lt. Bao Tran will be reunited in a special ceremony at the Vietnamese American Association of New Mexico on Central SE.

“I’m very excited,” Kim said as she prepared for the overnight flight to Albuquerque.

“The whole point is that, during a very stressful time in his life, he took the time to save the life of a child,” she said.

That child, she noted, served her country in the military and continues to serve by helping veterans and military families.

In a brief recounting of the story Tran wrote for the occasion, he said this to Kim:

“I hope with all my heart that I have helped bring to an end your long search and longing to find your Vietnamese roots.”
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal