The origins of a transnational adoption strategy that secured the future for Korean-black children The Korean War left hundreds of thousands of children in dire circumstances, but the first large-scale transnational adoption efforts involved the children of American soldiers and Korean women. Korean laws and traditions stipulated that citizenship and status passed from father to child, which made the children of US soldiers legally stateless. Korean-black children faced additional hardships because of Korean beliefs about racial purity, and the segregation that structured African American soldiers’ lives in the military and throughout US society. The African American families who tried to adopt Korean-black children also faced and challenged discrimination in the child welfare agencies that arranged adoptions. Drawing on extensive research in black newspapers and magazines, interviews with African American soldiers, and case notes about African American adoptive families, A War Born Family demonstrates how the Cold War and the struggle for civil rights led child welfare agencies to reevaluate African American men and women as suitable adoptive parents, advancing the cause of Korean transnational adoption.

“The important . . . largely unknown story of American adoption of Korean children since the Korean War . . . with remarkably extensive research and great verve.” —Charles K. Armstrong, Columbia University Arissa Oh argues that international adoption began in the aftermath of the Korean War. First established as an emergency measure through which to evacuate mixed-race “GI babies,” it became a mechanism through which the Korean government exported its unwanted children: the poor, the disabled, or those lacking Korean fathers. Focusing on the legal, social, and political systems at work, To Save the Children of Korea shows how the growth of Korean adoption from the 1950s to the 1980s occurred within the context of the neocolonial US-Korea relationship, and was facilitated by crucial congruencies in American and Korean racial thought, government policies, and nationalisms. Korean adoption served as a kind of template as international adoption began, in the late 1960s, to expand to new sending and receiving countries. Ultimately, Oh demonstrates that although Korea was not the first place that Americans adopted from internationally, it was the place where organized, systematic international adoption was born. “Absolutely fascinating.” —Giulia Miller, Times Higher Education “ Gracefully written. . . . Oh shows us how domestic politics and desires are intertwined with geopolitical relationships and aims.” —Naoko Shibusawa, Brown University “Poignant, wide-ranging analysis and research.” —Kevin Y. Kim, Canadian Journal of History “Illuminates how the spheres of ‘public’ and ‘private,’ ‘domestic’ and ‘political’ are deeply imbricated and complicate American ideologies about family, nation, and race.” —Kira A. Donnell, Adoption & Culture

This book explores the life courses of children born of war in different twentieth-century conflicts, including the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan Genocide and the LRA conflict. It investigates both governmental and military policies vis-à-vis children born of war and their mothers, as well as family and local community attitudes, building a complex picture of the multi-layered challenges faced by many children born of war within their post-conflict receptor communities. Based on extensive archival research, the book also uses oral history and participatory research methods which allow the author to add the voices of the children born of war to historical analysis.

Born to War is intended to, through my eyes as a Berlin child, point out how easily freedom can be lost, and the pain and suffering required to regain that lost freedom. It's a message that war does not distinguish between guilt and innocence. The pain and suffering of war is ladled out equally to all in its path. Ours was a constant struggle for survival, for food, water, and warmth, the bare necessities of life. For many months we lived above ground when possible, and below ground when necessary, as hundreds of Allied aircraft dropped bombs on the city both day and night. Fear and fury were my reality during the many hours spent in the musty and uncomfortable bomb shelter. I had not even the luxury of hope for better times, for I had no concept of better times. I knew only war, and the suffering and misery that it brought. The war would end, but misery lasted long after. And death was to remain a constant companion to Berliners due to starvation, hypothermia, suicide and other war-related circumstances. I lost many people dear to me during and in the wake of WWII. Yet I was one of the lucky children born to war who survived. And I survived largely due to the love and care of "Oma," my grandmother, to whom this work is mainly dedicated. It remains very difficult for me to imagine the anguish she must have suffered in that terrible period.

Chronicles the story of two ordinary Americans, Wilber and Norma Bradt, during an extraordinary time, World War II. Offers insight-on the historic conflict as it was fought by the U.S. Army in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and The Philippines and by a family on the home front.

"Our Family Tree, as far as is known, was first planted in America by the Reverend Mr. James Clack, who came from Marden, in Wiltshire, England, to Gloucester County, Virginia, as a minister of the Established Church in the year 1678. It was his grand daughter, Sarah Clack, daughter of James Clack II, who married William Maclin III, in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1754"--Forward. Descendants and relatives lived in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Louisiana and elsewhere