Mekong Joe August 12, 2012

In 1968, in Vietnam, Tran Than Hai was born to a Vietnamese mother, from an American GI father. Six years later, he and his brother were two of the many children airlifted out of Saigon just hours before the fall of the city to the Vietcong. Adopted by a mid-western, military couple, he became Joe and his older brother became Tony. An Amerasian boy, who grew up never feeling like he truly belonged, Joe landed in L.A. where he became an actor in film, TV, and stage where he was often cast as a Latino "gang banger". A 30 years after the war, in a miracle that brought NBC Dateline with them, both Joe and Tony are tearfully reunited with their birth mother in Vietnam at the very airport where they dodged sniper fire as children. It is a dynamic, moving and funny story told from the human side of war. All of it absolutely true.