(gentle music)
- My name is Chris Norlund,
and I survived a plane crash as a baby.
I was born at the end of the Vietnam War,
I don't have a birthday,
so I don't really know exactly when I was born.
Americans know that there were 56,000 G.I deaths in the war,
But what the Americans don't talked about
is there are as many
as 3 million Vietnamese killed in the war.
As a result of that, there was as many as a million orphans,
and I was one of them.
The only paperwork that I had
was a little three by five card
that said the name of my orphanage,
so I always knew it was Sancta Maria Orphanage in Saigon,
and there were three names on the card.
However, because I don't speak Vietnamese,
I never really knew what the names meant.
Later in life, I was able to,
contact one of the nuns in my orphanage,
she told me that 90% of the children died in my orphanage,
so I'm really lucky to be alive.
Because it was at the end of the war,
there wasn't enough food, water
and in fact, we didn't even have enough diapers,
so they put us in buckets for most of the day.
The one thing that the nurse told me
was that every orphan was loved in the orphanage
and it's something I always remember that she told me.
After President Nixon resigned,
the North Vietnamese decided to attack
and take over the entire country,
and the Americans weren't gonna fight anymore,
essentially, the war was over
from the Americans perspective.
It was now President Ford,
and he asked the American Congress
to get money for what's called Operation Babylift.
Operation Babylift was a series of airlifts in April 1975.
It brought 3300 Vietnamese orphaned children
to countries like the USA, Australia, Canada and France,
although the official Number says 3300 children,
no one knows for sure exactly
how many children were evacuated.
This was an evacuation at the end of the war
so it was very chaotic,
for whatever reason I was put on the first plane out
it was a C-5A Galaxy, which at the time,
it was the largest airplane in the world,
the really big cargo planes, the one you see in the movies,
the one you can drive a Jeep on into
because I was a baby, they put me in a shoe box
and they put that on the airplane passenger seat,
and seat belted us in.
Our plane took off from Tan Son Nhut Airport,
there were over 300 people on the plane,
about 280 passengers and 30 crew members.
After a few minutes in the air,
there was a malfunction on the plane
and the rear cargo doors blew
and all the people in the lower half of the plane
just fell to their deaths.
Because I was young I was in the upper half of the plane
and therefore I survived.
After we lost power, the pilots tried to regain control,
and so they ended up speeding up the plane
and they turned around and crashed into a rice field.
The plane skidded for about quarter of a mile
and skipped up back in the air and then crashed into a dike.
We were full of fuel and the plane exploded into four parts
and everything caught on fire.
The plane was about a mile from the road,
so when the Americans sent in the rescue Jeeps,
they had to walk really far across the rice field,
and the helicopters arrived, but they couldn't land,
and so they would hover above us,
there was just smoke and fire everywhere,
they would lower one rescue worker at a time,
rescue one person and bring them back up in the basket.
But because the rescue operation was slow,
some people actually survived the crash
but either burn to death or drown in the mud.
About 176 people survived the crash,
and about 138 children and crew members were lost.
Those of us that survived the crash
were flown to United States.
This crash was the largest loss of life
in Defense Intelligence Agency history, until 9/11.
When I arrived in the USA,
even though I was here, I still didn't have a country,
South Vietnam didn't exist anymore,
and Americans didn't make me a citizen.
I didn't have any paperwork,
so it was actually really difficult to prove that I existed.
All I had was my little three by five card
that said I was from Sancta Maria Orphanage.
After living seven years in the USA,
and I actually don't even know how old I am,
so I don't have a birthday.
I was eligible though, to apply for US citizenship.
So I went down to the courthouse
and I swore to be an American like all the other immigrants
and I had to miss a day of school.
The next day at school, my teacher said,
"What did you do?"
And I said, "I became an American,"
and I remember really clearly this little girl walks
to the front of the room
and reads me a welcome to America speech,
and every kid in my grade made me
welcome to America cards in crayon,
you know, Statue of Liberty and immigrants on boats.
This is what America is to me.
After the events of 9/11,
I joined the United States Navy to be a pilot.
Growing up in the USA,
people would always tell me that I was lucky to be here
and lucky to be alive
and in my head the way they make you feel is that,
America is the best place in the world
and all the other countries are not any good.
So I always felt like I was from a bad place
and I felt like I was from a place
where Americans got killed.
Vietnam was never a place that was a good place,
when I was in the military,
and I would meet Vietnam veterans,
they were actually my flight surgeon,
and they would look at my charts,
and they would see that I was from Saigon,
and they'd always asked me about that,
and I always felt shame
because I didn't know much about my country.
The thing that they always tell me is that,
Vietnam is a really beautiful country.
You know, for years, everyone would always ask me
if I ever wanna go back and things like that,
and it just always seem so far away,
seemed like another world.
Like many people, I was lucky enough
to find someone to get married to.
My wife was a Korean national,
and so I actually flew back to Korea to meet the family,
and while I was in Korea,
we were actually close enough to go to Vietnam,
so my, you know, then fiance, but now my wife,
we went to Vietnam for the very first time
and I fell in love.
It was a beautiful, people looked like me,
which I'd never seen before.
When I arrived at the Saigon Airport,
it was Tan Son Nhut, which was the same airport
that my plane back in 1975 had left from,
emotion was really overwhelming, and the humidity.
I knew I had to return home.
One of the things about being in Vietnam
and being in Saigon, that's different than being in USA is,
everybody knows about the plane crash,
and everyone knows about people like me,
and one of the things I wanted to do
is see if I could find my orphanage,
and so I did some Googling and things
cause I knew the name of the orphanage,
and I found the address,
and as it turns out,
my orphanage was in the same neighborhood
that I chose my apartment.
It was different than what I had imagined,
the places just felt like there was love there,
and I understand now when the nun said,
that they loved every one of us,
and I felt that when I was there.
You know, people always ask me if I wanna find my parents
or find my family,
and I've come to accept that I don't have anyone.
When I discovered the location to my orphanage,
there was a little bit of hope
that maybe I could find my parents or something.
And, you know, I'd read stories and things where,
you know, sometimes these places have like a book,
where they have all the records,
and, you know, we get to the orphanage
and we found out the orphanage was closed
and there was no office anymore,
and there's no book and I just to kind of accept that,
you know, maybe I'll never know.
Emotionally in 2019 was a really high for me,
2020 though comes and my wife as a Korean national
and the immigration office was closed last year.
So I returned to the USA
to try to facilitate my wife's green card,
I haven't seen my wife since December 2019.
This year in 2020,
I just do everything I can to spread positivity,
I started a podcast called "Bluer Sky,"
and the idea is that
not only is tomorrow going to be
a blue sky day something positive, it's gonna be bluer
than you could ever imagine.
Because of where I came from,
and because of the way I grew up,
I never to look down on anyone,
and I never make fun of anyone
because I know that a lot of the good people in the world
can come from any background.
Because I don't have any family,
I find myself reaching out to people all the time
to develop relationships
and share as many positive messages as I can
because I feel that we can rely on each other
and support each other through these tough times.
(gentle music)