ABSTRACT
A broad array of Americans embraced the adoption of Korean GI babies as a new kind of missionary work. Generally speaking, adoptive families adopted for religious or humanitarian reasons. They were a subset of a second, much larger group: Christian Americanists, as represented by the American mass media and Congress. This second group infused the religiously motivated adoptions with nationalist meaning and celebrated them as an affirmation not only of the adoptive parents’ Christian goodness but also of their Americanness. Harry Holt was the figurehead of this Christian Americanist project. In 1955, he brought twelve Korean GI babies to the United States: he and his wife, Bertha, had adopted eight, and the other four went to three other families. The Christian Americanism that powered the early Korean adoption movement was short lived, fading away in the early 1960s.
