President Ford’s announcement of ‘Operation Babylift’, a plan to airlift over 2,000 Vietnamese ‘orphans’ from South Vietnam to the United States in March 1975, prompted a wave of interest in adoption of Vietnamese children by American families. This was the culmination of years of growing interest in adopting Vietnamese ‘orphans’. Contemporary newspaper reports credited television and photographs with motivating potential adopters. Adding to scholarship which explores how photographs create discourses of ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibility’ in humanitarian contexts, this article examines how arguments for transnational adoption as a solution to Vietnam’s ‘orphan problem’ developed in the years leading up to Babylift. It notes stark differences in depictions of white-Amerasian and black-Amerasian children in keeping with racial discourses of early 1970s America. The work of female journalists in Vietnam has historically been marginalized; this article redresses this, arguing that American women photographers offered a specific perspective on the ‘orphan problem’.

1975 年 3 月，福特总统宣布了“婴儿运送行动”，计划将 2000 多名越南“孤儿”从南越空运到美国，引发了美国家庭收养越南儿童的热潮。这是多年来人们对收养越南“孤儿”日益浓厚的兴趣的顶峰。当代报纸报道认为电视和照片能够激励潜在的采用者。除了探讨照片如何在人道主义背景下创造“救援”和“责任”话语的学术研究之外，本文还探讨了在“婴儿举升”之前的几年中，跨国收养作为越南“孤儿问题”解决方案的争论是如何发展的。它注意到对美亚混血白人和美亚混血黑人儿童的描述存在明显差异，这与 20 世纪 70 年代初美国的种族话语一致。越南女记者的工作历来被边缘化；本文对此进行了纠正，认为美国女性摄影师对“孤儿问题”提供了特定的视角。