Word: guam
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...standing on the hot tarmac of the El Toro Marine Air Station at Santa Ana, Calif., along with 49 other Vietnamese-all waiting to board the C-141 Starlifter that would take them to Guam, the first leg of their journey back home. They were among the 2,500 refugees who have petitioned to be flown back to Viet Nam by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (1,200 have already left). Most of them, especially the single men, are returning because they want to be reunited with their families. But increasingly, those who seek repatriation reflect an unfortunate fact...
...doubt that the program can be completed before next spring. About 48,000 refugees-more than one-third of the total-have been "out-processed" to homes. Meanwhile, 62,000 still languish in four refugee camps in the U.S., and 18,000 have not yet left way stations on Guam and Wake Island...
...settled in their new American homes within three months. Now that seems to have been just one more delusion. Red tape, a shortage of sponsors and sorely understaffed volunteer organizations have combined to keep more than 100,000 refugees billeted in four camps in the U.S. and on Guam. Only 24,000 refugees out of a total of 131,000 have moved out so far. Though the processing began to speed up last week, it remained agonizingly slow, and the displaced Vietnamese were increasingly anxious. A total of 1,264 have said that they want to go back home...
...between 300 and 400 people a day. Fort Chaffee, Ark., sends about 200 people each day from its population of more than 24,000. Yet no sooner are their bunks emptied than others arrive to replace them, with some 40,000 refugees backed up and still to come from Guam. A fifth camp, which will eventually hold 15,000 refugees, opened last week at a military post at Indiantown Gap, Pa., to help handle the problem...
Matlovich's act was the culmination of a long personal odyssey. The son of a career Air Force sergeant, Matlovich grew up on military bases in such places as Charleston, S.C., Alaska and Guam. In 1963, after graduating from high school in England, he joined the Air Force. "I knew I was homosexual then," he says. "I had been since I was in the seventh grade...