During the Vietnam War, an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 children were born to U.S. servicemen and Vietnamese women. These so-called Amerasians often had difficulty integrating into their postwar societies because of stigmatization and encountered severe economic disadvantages. This book describes the U.S. response to Amerasians over a 30-year period. In seven chronologically organized chapters that situate the Amerasian issue within the international relations of the Cold War, Sabrina Thomas examines why these children were denied U.S. citizenship.
Amerasians in Vietnam, most of whom were born outside the institution of marriage and were not legitimated by their fathers, had no legal claim to U.S. citizenship. Thomas begins by explaining how the Amerasians’ ineligibility for U.S. citizenship has been firmly rooted in the history of race, gender, and war. She convincingly details how the racialized and exclusionary policies toward mixed-race individuals and people of Asian descent during U.S. interventions in Asia in...