During the Vietnam War, the United States (US) used air bases in Thailand to bomb North Vietnam.
Thousands of American soldiers were stationed in Thailand and many had children with local women.
But after the war ended, most of the soldiers left.
Fifty years later, thanks to the help of DNA tests, some of these abandoned children can be reunited with their biological parents.
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A young Thai woman gave birth to Jenny Stuber in 1970, somewhere near the Yu-Tapao Air Base, 140 kilometers southeast of Bangkok.
"Mom couldn't keep me.
"They gave me to her best friend, but she couldn't take care of me either," Jenny says.
So Jenny was handed over to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, an international organization that supported and counseled unwanted "children of war".
Nobody knew who Jenna's father was.
The only information they had was that he was an American soldier working at Ju-Tapao, one of eight American air bases built in Thailand during the Vietnam War and the main airfield for their B-52 bombers.
Between 1965 and 1973, hundreds of thousands of American troops were sent each year to fight the communist regime in North Vietnam (then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam).
According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, a total of 3,4 million Americans were deployed to Southeast Asia during the conflict.
During the Cold War, the USA feared the possible spread of communism, especially the "domino effect" - that if one Asian country accepted a leftist ideology, others would soon follow suit.
At the height of the war, about 50.000 US troops were stationed in Thailand.
And during the leave for rest and recovery, thousands of soldiers regularly went to Thailand from Vietnam.
Bars, nightclubs, brothels, and other entertainment venues sprung up in the red-light districts that were built around American air bases.
Many soldiers had casual sex or short-term relationships with local women.
It was from such a relationship that Jenny was born.
When she was three weeks old, she was adopted by a Swiss couple who were working in Thailand at the time.
As she was raised with her siblings from Switzerland, Jenny did not feel that she was different from them.
Until one day...
"In a department store in Bangkok, a lady asked me where my mom was.
"I pointed to my mother, a blonde-haired woman standing next to the cash register.
"The lady was confused," she recalls.
Through bedtime stories, she learned that she was adopted.
When Jenny was 14, her family moved to Switzerland, and she vowed that one day she would return to Thailand to find her biological parents.
Thanks to DNA tests, which are easily available today, she managed to find her father in the USA in 2022.
But that was not the end of her search: Jenny, now 53, is still desperately searching for her Thai mother.
"I tell myself that I'll probably never find my mother and that my story won't have a happy ending," says Jenny, her eyes brimming with tears.
Sex-tourism during the war
US involvement in the Vietnam War ended when troops from communist North Vietnam occupied Saigon, in the south.
The cost and sacrifices of the long-term war were too great for the USA.
Their troops were withdrawn in 1973, and two years later, the army of communist North Vietnam invaded non-communist South Vietnam.
The presence of Americans in Thailand significantly changed the international image of the country and fueled the rapid growth of tourism.
From just 200.000 international and domestic visitors in 1960, the number rose to 800.000 in 1970, and a decade later, Thailand hosted as many as five million tourists.
Fifty years after the Vietnam War, Thailand is still one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, as well as the center of sex tourism, which is partly a legacy of the war years.
Appeals on television
Just a few years before Jenny Stuber was born, Morris K. Ply Roberts, the child of a Thai woman and an American soldier, was put up for adoption.
His mother gave him to Pearl S. Buck, the same foundation that helped the Swiss family adopt Jenny.
The foundation estimated that by 1968 there were "more than 2.000" children whose mothers were Thai and whose biological fathers were members of the US military who were sent to Thailand during the war.
Even the term "Ameroasian" was coined, which was often used to refer to children born in East and Southeast Asia, whose mothers are local women and whose fathers are American soldiers.
The foundation told the BBC that only five percent of fathers who returned to the US after the war provided financial assistance to their children in Thailand, and of those who initially did, most stopped sending money after a year.
Maurice was taken care of by a rich Thai family.
Today he is a famous actor and TV presenter.
Ali remembers his childhood as a time when he was neglected and neglected.
He says he was raised "like a servant" and had to work to get food.
"At home I was beaten, kicked and verbally abused, and at school I fought and fought with other children.
"Because of the dark color of my skin, I was considered dirty... I was a less valuable person to them," he says.
He ran away from home several times, but always returned.
When he was 17, Morris finally left the foster home and turned to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in Pattaya.
With their support, he managed to finish school.
He then entered the entertainment industry in Thailand and began working as a TV host under the stage name Maurice K.
In his broadcasts, he appealed to anyone who has information about his mother to contact him.
When Morris was 34 years old, in 1995, she appeared at his door.
"We didn't throw ourselves into each other's arms, although I wanted to hug her.
"The need for a mother's love turned into anger.
"I wanted to know why she left me."
Having a dark-skinned baby without a father was scandalous for a Thai woman, she told him.
"Without me, she could get married again, have a real family," she told Morisu.
He learned that his father was an American soldier who worked near Chachongsa province, east of Bangkok, where he met Morris' mother.
They dated briefly before he left Thailand without saying goodbye.
"She couldn't remember his name. She burned all the photos and everything else.
"My mother wanted to forget everything about him, people thought she was a sex worker."
In addition to these unwanted children, widespread prostitution in Thailand is also a legacy of those war years.
Janos Cilberberg, a professor at the University of Bristol, says the development of red light districts near US air bases is a result of the presence of soldiers in the country during the Vietnam War.
"Thailand is a clear example of how the sex industry is developing.
"American soldiers went to fight in Vietnam, but they spent their regular leave relaxing in Thailand.
"When the war ended, the soldiers were replaced by tourists," he says.
The red light districts are still where the American bases used to be, even though the military facilities were closed decades ago.
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"Rented Wives"
Pačarin Lapanun, author of the book Love, Money and Obligation: Transnational Marriage in a Northeast Thai Village (Love, Money, and Obligation: Transnational Marriage in a North-eastern Thai Village), explains that they are
Thai women and American soldiers had complex relationships.
In some cases, "they lived together as a couple for several months, and their relationship would last until the soldiers were sent to the front or back to the US," says the author.
Some in Thailand considered these women "rented wives".
Morris's mother passed away a decade after they first met and the host thought that would be the end of his search for his biological father.
But years later, he decided to take a DNA test in collaboration with an American company that helps people find their ancestors.
Based on the results, he identified a relative whom he asked if anyone in her family had been in Thailand between 1964 and 1966.
And someone did - a former soldier named Isaiah Roberts.
In 2019, a cousin helped arrange the first of many video conversations between Maurice and Isaiah, who has three other grown children.
After several delays due to the covid-19 pandemic, Morris traveled to the American state of Alabama in 2022 to meet his father, who was then 85 years old, for the first time.
The DNA test showed a 99,6 percent genetic match.
"My dad said we don't need any more DNA tests, his DNA is all over my face," says Morris.
"I know he's probably mine because I had a relationship with his mother.
"I will not refuse him. I accept it and take responsibility," said Ajzeja in an interview with the Voice of America.
Earlier this year, Morris gave up his TV career in Thailand and moved to the US to live with his father.
Now he posts videos of his new life on social networks.
'I don't even know my mother's full name'
Jenny Stuber watches videos of Morris hugging her father and her eyes fill with tears.
She also found her father in 2022 using a DNA test, but they have not yet met.
He is now 78 years old and serving time in an American prison.
They exchange letters and photos and he believes that she is really his daughter.
"I asked him who my mother was. He says he doesn't know her full name," she says.
"The door that could lead me to my mother is closed".
In the letters, Jenna's father recalls that her mother worked at a food stand outside Ju-Tapaa Air Force Base.
They saw each other for about 10 months while he was stationed in Thailand.
"Then in 1970, my father was ordered to return to America.
"The army wanted to send his younger brother to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), and at that time there was a rule that soldiers from the same family could not be assigned to positions at the same time."
He never found out that the Thai woman running the food stall was pregnant.
"He told me he never knew my mom's full name and he regrets not asking her," Jenny says of her father, who later married and divorced and has two grown children.
Jenny went to Thailand several times and visited the place where the food stalls used to be.
She contacted the local authorities in the areas where her mother might have lived and worked, but found no trace.
"I'm trying to imagine what it looks like.
"My father told me: 'Jenny, look in the mirror, smile and you'll see her.'"
Jenny now hopes that her biological father will be pardoned and that he will soon be released from prison.
She would like to talk to him via video call.
"I hope it will be next year, maybe later. But who knows, maybe never...", she says.
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