What you will read below is taken from an affidavit by Cherie Clark, who was the Overseas Director of Adoption for Friends of Children of Viet Nam during Operation BabyLift. The pictures were taken by the volunteers who helped during the last days of the Vietnam Conflict:

The children in these pictures traveled to the United States during April of 1975, under the auspices of Friends of Children of Viet Nam, a charitable organization which engaged in Vietnamese adoptions by contract with the Republic of Viet Nam.

Friends of Children of Viet Nam's primary role was that of life support. As a secondary program we facilitated the adoption of hopelessly and undeniably abandoned children. Children assisted by Friends of Children of Viet Nam were, to a large degree, malnourished newborn infants abandoned at maternity hospitals and orphanages. These infants were entrusted to the custody of orphanages without identity, usually in a very marginal state of health.

The normal procedure that occurred in the adoption process, as followed by our agency, was directly related to the philosophy of our organization which was to assist the child most in need, i.e. the premature, the malnourished, the debilitated, the handicapped, or by other definition - the high risk child.

As part of our routine we would travel to the Mekong Delta once a week to visit orphanages, provided that the circumstances of war did not prohibit travel. The purpose of these trips was - first, to deliver desperately needed food, medical supplies, and contributions to the orphanages; second, to evacuate children, mostly infants, who were in dire need of medical care, which was unavailable.  Due to the ever-increasing rate of abandonment, the orphanages accepted increasing numbers of children into their care. This increase of abandoned children greatly taxed and overwhelmed them.