To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption by Arissa H. Oh (review)

To Save the Children of Korea expands our understanding of Asians in America. This significant and compelling book by Arissa H. Oh is part of Gordon H. Chang’s Stanford University series on Asian America. It cogently explains the origins of international adoption of Korean War babies, which further encouraged US multi-ethnicity. Her well-researched, well-written volume describes the origins and legacies of the Korean War (1950–1953) and the resulting organizations and efforts encouraging adoption of Korean GI war babies. While adoptions from Europe and Japan had taken place after WWII, the adoption efforts for Korean War babies represented the first systematic program of international adoption on a large and lasting scale. Adoption across racial lines was encouraged by both humanitarian feelings and Cold War politics. Under Korean law a child’s citizenship passed from father to child; hence without a Korean father a child born in Korea was considered stateless and would have difficulties securing education, employment, or marriage.

Postwar South Korea led by Syngman Rhee was supportive of international adoption of Korean “half-blood” children sired by American GIs and other UN forces because he wished to keep up the myth of a racially “pure” Korea (minjok or “nation,” and ilmin juui or “one peopleism”) and because the welfare system within war-torn Korea was minimal. Hence these stateless and ostracized “half-blood” children would be removed to America—“to go home to daddy.” Both South Korean and American governments made legislative changes to facilitate adoptions of Korean GI war babies, and American adoptive families were eager to receive these children. Arissa Oh explains the camp-towns that had sprung up around American military bases which facilitated the liaisons between GIs and local women, the adoption of “mas-cots” and “houseboys” by GIs to give quasi-care to orphaned children, and the growth of orphanages and social service organizations. Many GIs contributed to the first efforts to provide protection and resources to the children plagued by war, as these children hung around the fringes of American bases seeking handouts.

Propelling the wish to adopt GI babies was an ideology Oh terms “Christian Americanism.” This was a combination of Christian duty and American patriotism. This intellectual stimulus allowed US citizens to combat both racism and communism at the same time. Colorblindness on the part of adoptive families championed America as the leader of international democracy for an inter-racial world. The face of Christian Americanism was Harry Holt, a farmer and lumberman from Creswell, Oregon, who, with his wife Bertha, adopted eight Korean orphans in 1955 and organized the Holt Adoption Program (HAP) in 1956, which airlifted huge numbers of GI babies to the States. Holt introduced proxy adoption and the idea of charter flights. He wanted to bring as many children as possible out of South Korea before the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 expired. Now called the Holt International Children Services, the original HAP pioneered intercountry adoptions with its well-publicized “baby flights,” often carrying planes filled with hundreds of baby baskets and their precious cargo. Between 1955 and 1961, 4,190 mixed-race orphans emigrated to the United States. This program accomplished its goals of saving lives and at the same time allowed America during the Cold War to gain the allegiance of nonwhite nations, especially in Asia. Oh describes all aspects of the technical workings of the adoption program—selecting orphan children, their adoptive families, the criteria used in the vetting process, and the relationship of programs like the Holts’ with other agencies.

Oh argues that ordinary Americans could help win friendships in Asia through their willingness to adopt a GI baby; patriotism and Christianity combined to form enthusiasm for mixed race adoptees. Americans could win the ideological war against communist North Korea by winning the hearts and minds of Asians through the Korean GI baby adoptions. Oh...