The Mail ABANDONED G.I. CHILDREN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

They say that the Marines bring home even their dead, but apparently not their children. Yesterday's evening news reported the existence of numbers of abandoned children of American GI's and South Vietnamese women. Because of the racial particularism of the Vietnamese, these children are regarded as another shameful wound inflicted by the American presence. As such, we owe the Vietnamese the immediate removal of these our unwanted children, along with our napalm, our bombs, and our soldiers.

More than this, these children are owed reparations like the other war victims. Congressman Drinan has proposed reparations for the Vietnamese people. The U.S. Government has established benefits for GI's or for their surviving families. The nation owes these American children what it gives the acknowledged orphans of American GI's.

Racism in America precludes our assuring these children escape from the discrimination they now face in Vietnam. But we must, at least, repatriate them, provide them with adoptive homes if possible, or with the best institutional care, and provide them with a national program of guaranteed, educational, medical, and material support. Those who remain with their Vietnamese mothers should receive the same benefits.

Concern for our prisoners in North Vietnam is nationwide, but what about these Americans? Time is running out for them, too, as they waste their earliest years abandoned on trash cans or with bare subsistence in orphanages. Our present policy of officially pretending they don't exist is a chilling reminder of our attitude toward other victims of our society-the children on A.D.C., the children of minority peoples, and the children of Mylai.