Pan Am flight out of Saigon in ’75 changed lives forever

My friend Betty Santoki, a former Pan Am stewardess, reminded me about the rescue of over 3,000 mostly orphaned babies from Vietnam at the end of that war in 1975. Most landed at Hickam Air Force Base and were cared for by Honolulu residents.

Many then continued on to San Francisco, where President and Mrs. Gerald Ford met some of the planes.

Pan Am normally served wealthy travelers. Their Babylift passengers were another way entirely.

Karen Walker Ryan was part of one crew. She was in Hong Kong when the Pan Am office there directed her crew to leave April 5 for Saigon to pick up 295 infants, 100 children under 12, five doctors, 10 nurses and 45 other escorts.

The next morning, Ryan said, they boarded an empty 747. During the 90-minute flight, the nine stewardesses and 10 volunteers put together cardboard bassinets, filled cartons of baby bottles with formula and positioned diapers and clothing for quick access.

In the plane’s upstairs lounge, doctors set up a crude ER.

They landed at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport, and an “onslaught of little bodies” was “carried up the ramp and thrust into our arms,” Ryan recalled.

“It brought tears to our eyes. All we could do was lay them on seats or in bassinets and turn around and take the next bundle of hot and crying child.

“Then came the older children, a few on crutches, others so very sad and upset. We frantically tried to sort out who needed immediate medical attention, while trying to secure the cabin for takeoff.”

After less than an hour on the ground, “we roared straight up and out of there, spreading our arms over as many babies as we could, FAA rules be damned.”

The entire 747 was stuffed full of traumatized and crying babies, Ryan said.

Babies were fed, and hot meals were served to the older children, many of whom wanted hugs, not hamburgers.

“I never had to do my job in tears before,” Ryan said. “Here were all these babies without their mothers. They needed their moms and they had us. The reality of war hadn’t hit me until then.”

The plane landed in Guam where a fresh crew took over. “It was 3 a.m. and 12 hours since we had first boarded that spotless 747 in Hong Kong.

“Although that day of flying for the world’s greatest airline was probably the most unglamorous of my nine-year career with Pan Am, it will always stand as the most rewarding. We departed, people changed forever.”

The orphans, attendants and their new flight crew arrived at Hickam.

“An escort was assigned individually to each child and remained with that child from the time he or she left the plane to the time he or she re-boarded,” the Air Force 15th Wing History Office says.

“Most were in Hawaii for only a few hours. Hundreds of 15th Wing personnel and volunteers met the aircraft, many to act as ‘temporary mothers and fathers’ to bathe, feed and simply hold the babies and young children.”

A few days ago I happened to sit next to Ray Lovell at La Tour Cafe on Nimitz Highway. Ray was a television reporter for KHON from 1973 to 1996, and by chance I found out he reported on the Babylift.

You might remember “Ray Lovell’s Journal,” a weekly feature that ran from 1984 to 1996 on KHON.

Lovell remembered being at Hickam. “I was standing next to a retired Army sergeant in his early 50s and his wife in a waiting room. The attendants were bringing babies off the plane, into the room, and calling names.”

They called the sergeant’s name and he identified himself. The attendant handed him a baby whose legs were twisted. The sergeant and his wife embraced the baby.

“Was this a surprise to you, that the baby’s legs were deformed?” Lovell asked the old sergeant.

“‘No, no, no, no,’ the sergeant said. ‘We told them, “We’ll take all you got that no one else wants.”’

“I was standing there with my microphone and crying like a baby,” Lovell says. “It was very moving.”

Another child was adopted by Don Baker and his wife. Baker had been an ABC reporter in Vietnam and worked for several Honolulu TV stations. He and his wife wanted one of the babies.

Baker asked Adm. Noel Gayler, then Pacific commander in chief, whether he could help him get a child. “Gayler helped him get a newborn boy, just a few days old,” Lovell recalls. “He named the baby Noel, after the man who made it possible.”

From April 3 to 26, 1975, 3,300 infants and children were brought out of Saigon to homes in the U.S., Australia, France and Canada. It was one of the largest rescue efforts in history.

Through September another 90,000 adult refugees transited through Hickam.

Ryan, the Pan Am stewardess, is retired now and lives in Montana, according to the Missoulian newspaper. In an article in that paper, Ryan said that in 2000 “Good Morning America” arranged a 25-year reunion of some of the children and people like herself.

Ryan’s home has photos of many of the children. Many send her cards on Mother’s Day. She has attended several of their weddings.

One was adopted by the family of a U.S. congressman. She’s married now with two children, according to the Missoulian article. Another is an ER doctor in Indiana. A third is a police officer in Seattle.

“I have these kids in my life that I wouldn’t otherwise have,” Ryan concludes, “and it has greatly enriched me. We have a special bond because I was there for this horrific transition in their lives.”

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.