Hope of the Phoenix
The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit
from the Ashes of Vietnam, 1975-1986
James N. (Jim) Purcell, Jr.
*The U.S. Refugee Program was renamed later as Population, Refugees, and Migration within State, serving refugees and others. In these days, the world watches the another expanding critical mass of desperate victims of conflict.
The Reawakening and Rise of America's Humanitarian Spirit
from the Ashes of Vietnam, 1975-1986
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| Early draft notes |
Hope of the Phoenix is two or three weeks away from a finished manuscript. The author's 400 pages establish a historical record about a team that saved post-Vietnam War Refugees (1975), then refugees in Cambodia and Laos, followed quickly by global refugee emergency rescues from 1979 onward. The years of the mid-1970s into the 1980s have often been referred to as "the refugee decade."
The pages show ideals, risks, and results of the leading nation in the world reawakened to its humanitarian spirit, joined under complementary policies, and a noble spirit sometimes forgotten and even avoided.
The pages show ideals, risks, and results of the leading nation in the world reawakened to its humanitarian spirit, joined under complementary policies, and a noble spirit sometimes forgotten and even avoided.
Refugee numbers exploded in an aftershock of global upheavals--the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean, South Asia, and the USSR--that forced civilians to flee across borders. The USSR, on the other hand, ignored advocate please around the world to release any Soviet Jews and other persecuted minorities that wanted to emigrate.
"This story needs to be told before eyewitnesses are gone." That is the energy behind the Hope of the Phoenix being finished now, decades after events. It's history largely unrecorded about brave actors around the world in different places, positions of influence, and power.
Millennials and the as-yet-unnamed generations after them should also hear of their nation's duty, and theirs, to help refugees in whatever ways possible. They need a purpose beyond themselves. They deserve a well-told, inspiring first-hand true story of how a nation combined policy and action at a critical period of its history.
To Gen-Xers and Millennials, the Vietnam War and its aftermath is like ancient history unless their interest is awakened to millions of refugee sagas, globally, that affected public policies and still have value for how America will lead and respond to "what's next?" questions of how and when to rescue and restore lives torn and taken by armed conflicts.
Millennials and the as-yet-unnamed generations after them should also hear of their nation's duty, and theirs, to help refugees in whatever ways possible. They need a purpose beyond themselves. They deserve a well-told, inspiring first-hand true story of how a nation combined policy and action at a critical period of its history.
To Gen-Xers and Millennials, the Vietnam War and its aftermath is like ancient history unless their interest is awakened to millions of refugee sagas, globally, that affected public policies and still have value for how America will lead and respond to "what's next?" questions of how and when to rescue and restore lives torn and taken by armed conflicts.
*The U.S. Refugee Program was renamed later as Population, Refugees, and Migration within State, serving refugees and others. In these days, the world watches the another expanding critical mass of desperate victims of conflict.
