The Past Haunts Father’s Search

Jim Stewart, 44, community service officer with the San Diego city schools, never did get over Vietnam.

That’s what you were supposed to do, 20-odd years ago, just forget about it. Lots of guys did that, of course. Vietnam was another life, another dream, or nightmare, or hell. You were better off just blocking it out.

I was in love the first time I walked in the door, Stewart says. She has got to be one of the most beautiful women I have ever laid eyes on.

He was military police, stationed first at Long Binh. It was the largest military complex in the world then. He transferred to Bien-hoa, on town patrol, after that and then was sent to Saigon. That’s where he met Mai. After he was decorated, they promoted him and gave him a real cush job on an Army complex. He worked 12 hours a day for three days, then was off for four days. Basically all he had to do was open a gate for an officer.

I moved in with her in a week.

It wasn’t all blood and guts. It was Vietnam. People. A life. The American public doesn’t know about that.

Jim Stewart grew up in Vietnam. That’s how he feels. He was 19 when he got there. He had been playing in a rock band before he left. He graduated high school in 1964 in Elkton, Md., and joined the Army in March, 1966--because he was bored.

She got pregnant. Nobody ever used birth control back then.

His daughter was born in 1967. He got to the hospital real soon, the day after or the day after that. He remembers walking in and Mai was rolling a big hot water bottle over her stomach. He doesn’t remember seeing the baby then, but he must have. All he knows is he loved this woman and then there was this real small thing there. He may have been afraid. Mai was ecstatic. But he was a big dumb country kid.

I would say, ‘Come on. Let’s go to America.’ She said, ‘Why? The Americans aren’t ever going to leave.’

As soon as he got on that airplane and left, he thought he had made a major, major mistake. His mother had moved to Washington state and so he went there. It wasn’t right. He went back to Vietnam a month later and walked home from the Saigon airport. She had no idea he was coming; none of his letters had arrived. He walked into the apartment complex and there was Mai, holding his daughter, standing at the top of the stairs. Her girlfriend, Dai, screamed.

I was 21 years old, making $7.70 an hour. I was considered filthy, filthy rich in Vietnam.

He got a wonderful job, in security. There were 150 PX facilities, snack bars and clubs in Vietnam, and his office would investigate all the losses and audit the facilities. Basically Jim and Mai were homebodies; they’d sit out on the street and occasionally go to the zoo. He remembers she was always discreet. They’d never ride in the same taxi together. He knew she knew that she was being looked at, but she was strong. If someone said something to her, she would talk back.

I think maybe my second daughter’s name is Phuong. I think I may have blocked it out.

He’d been there four years, and maybe he was getting homesick. He kept asking her to leave; he asked her to marry him. She said she couldn’t leave, that her mother wouldn’t be able to find her. He moved into another apartment. His second daughter was born in 1970. Mai came over, knocked on the door and said, “Do you want to see your daughter?” He picked up his daughter and looked at her. He remembers that the first, Tuyet, was olive-skinned. This baby looked different somehow. Mai said, “Look at her feet,” and they were his feet. Long and skinny feet. He said, “Will you leave with me now?” She said no. So he handed the baby back and went and quit his job.

That second time, she didn’t cry when I left.

He got on that plane and the same thing happened. A terrible mistake. He wanted to get his old job back. He tried for a month, but he couldn’t get through on the phone. He knew mail wouldn’t make it. Then he just sort of gave it up. He was 23. He tried to get on with his life and put it behind him. It was hard; he was completely lost. He felt like he was in a foreign country in the United States, out of touch, square as they come. He hitchhiked across the country and let his hair grow long like everybody else and he hated that. He tried to get in a rock band back East. He majored in police science in Seattle. Then he came to San Diego and got married in 1973. He and his wife have been separated for three months.

I had a lot of guilt. I had a vasectomy in 1975. I didn’t want to have kids.

Jim Stewart started aggressively looking for his daughters two years ago. His wife thought it had only been one year. He remembers going to the mailbox first and trying to intercept any letters from the people he’d contacted. He’s written to almost everybody. The government and the Red Cross haven’t helped at all. The most help has come from private people, who have even put up signs near where Mai and he used to live in Saigon. He’s written to “any child” in the camps in the Philippines asking for information. So far he has nothing and doesn’t feel he’s any closer at all.

I think it’s an inward thing with me. Maybe it’s being older and more melancholy. It’s unfinished business. I’m probably a grandfather now.

He visualizes walking up to them and everything. There’s this picture in his mind of these two girls with long, dark hair like their mother, wearing these Vietnamese dresses. Ao dais , he thinks they’re called. His search is such an emotional issue. There are so many different scenarios. What if they don’t want to see him? About Mai, all he can say is that she was a woman whom he loved very much and always will. There’s a lot of fear there, about what happened to her, about what she thinks of him. And he guesses if he ever does see his daughters, the first thing he needs to ask for is their forgiveness.

How long am I going to look? I don’t plan on stopping.