Amerasians

The pedicab's bonnet was raised to block the sun, but two passengers could be seen--a Vietnamese woman and a boy with long, sandy hair. "American? American?" a reporter called out. "Yes," the woman shouted back, "his father is American." At a streetside cafe, she told her story, an example of what has been a lingering problem in Vietnam--the Amerasians.

The building in the city that once crumbled under a rain of artillery is clean, trim and inviting, not unlike a resort hotel, and the young Vietnamese people who live there are much the same. But they are not quite Vietnamese, and they don't want to stay. They long to be American, but they are not quite American. They are hopeful, but they are also bewildered, dispossessed, lost in a world of hazy culture and ethnicity between Orient and Occident.

For years, Lee Yu Jin kept her secret. Whenever anybody asked -- and they did all the time as her celebrity as an actress and model spread -- she simply denied the rumors. No, she was not a foreigner. She was Korean. Finally, last year, Lee called a news conference and tearfully acknowledged that her father was an American GI. As her fans had long suspected from her 5-foot-9 stature, she was of mixed race.

Just 10 years ago, Marianne Blank was perched atop the cause du jour. As the director of the nation's busiest Amerasian refugee program, she provided job training, English lessons and tutoring for children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women--living legacies, and pariahs, of the Vietnam War. Congress wrote checks. Morley Safer came calling. The kids were on Oprah. "It was the sexy topic of the time," Blank, now 68 and executive director of St.

It has been tough for a social service administrator, working practically by herself, to help Orange County's 2,500 Amerasians and their family members adjust to life in the United States practically by herself. But Mary Nguyen--Amerasian Services coordinator at St. Anselm's Immigrant and Refugee Community Center in Garden Grove since 1990--is finally getting some assistance.

When Anne-Thu Pham heard the boy singing a song in perfect Vietnamese, she was impressed. His looks seemed very "American" to her, so she complimented him in English on his command of her native language. But the boy merely stared at her. Irritated, Anne-Thu muttered to herself in Vietnamese, "How rude!" The boy's face brightened. In Vietnamese, he quickly apologized, explaining that he did not speak English.

The building in the city that once crumbled under a rain of artillery is clean, trim and inviting, not unlike a resort hotel, and the young Vietnamese people who live there are much the same. But they are not quite Vietnamese, and they don't want to stay. They long to be American, but they are not quite American. They are hopeful, but they are also bewildered, dispossessed, lost in a world of hazy culture and ethnicity between Orient and Occident.

Her mother sent her here, she says, fidgeting a little, breaking into a grin, not quite sure if happiness is called for or not. People around her are speaking in English, a language that she recognizes only for its incomprehensible sounds. When she speaks, her words are in Vietnamese. Thu-Ha Le has been in Little Saigon a week. She was born in Bien-hoa, on the outskirts of that other Saigon, the one that no longer officially exists. It was the Year of the Chicken, 22 years ago on Christmas Day.

Her mother sent her here, she says, fidgeting a little, breaking into a grin, not quite sure if happiness is called for or not. People around her are speaking English, a language that she recognizes only for its incomprehensible sounds. When she speaks, her words are Vietnamese. Thu-Ha Le has been in Orange County's Little Saigon a week. She was born in Bien Hoa on the outskirts of that other Saigon, the one that no longer officially exists.

An unprecedented lawsuit filed Thursday says the U.S. Navy should pay medical and education expenses for thousands of impoverished Amerasian children fathered and abandoned by U.S. servicemen in the Philippines. The class-action suit charges that the children are owed the financial support because they are the product of a Navy policy that fostered and encouraged a prostitution industry for sailors stationed or on leave in the island nation.