the musical was inspired by a photograph, which schönberg found inadvertently in a magazine. it showed a vietnamese mother leaving her child at a departure gate at tan son nhut air base to board an airplane headed for the united states where the child's father, an ex-gi, would be in a position to provide a much better life for the child. schönberg considered this mother's actions for her child to be "the ultimate sacrifice," an idea central to the plot of "miss saigon".