LINGERING LEGACY OF THE VIETNAM WAR: AGENT ORANGE

Commentary For ASIAN WEEK
May 4, 2005 © Vu-Duc Vuong
LINGERING LEGACY OF THE VIETNAM WAR: AGENT ORANGE By Vu-Duc Vuong

From 1962 to 1971, during the war in Vietnam, American forces used 21 million gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants contaminated with TCDD, to clear the jungle that provided cover for communist insurgents. TCDD (tetrachlorodibenzop-dioxin) is the most dangerous form of dioxin, and many scientists consider it one of the planet’s most deadly substances. The use of herbicides in war was outlawed by the United Nations in 1969, and renounced by the United States in 1975. The bulk of the chemicals was sprayed from airplanes in designated areas in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; but an undetermined amount was leaked into the storage ground by accidents or deliberately dumped in landfills, after the program was terminated.

The most vicious consequence of Agent Orange, more than the destruction of the land and contamination of the water, is its silent, apparently unending, and deadly metamorphosis of the human body. This poison changed the genetic and hormonal codes in persons who carry too high a concentration in their fatty tissues. They may develop cancers or suffer multiple miscarriages later in life; but their children, and now grandchildren as well, may also be born with severe birth defects, such as conjoined twins, collapsed skulls, twisted spines, missing limbs or organs, or deformed fetuses. And there is no evidence that this will be the last generation whose life will be turned upside down by dioxin.

Dr. Phan Thi Phi Phi who worked from 1966 to 1971 as director of a mobile hospital in Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces, an area heavily sprayed with herbicides. She had four miscarriages and nearly died. “Agent Orange destroys human life for many generations,” she said.

Joe Isaacson, a New Jersey school administrator and Vietnam vet, is fighting his non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer since the 1990’s. He is grateful that his 19-year-old daughter is healthy, but his anger has not diminished: “We didn’t know that it (Agent Orange) was more dangerous than the enemy.”

One of his counterparts, Nguyen Van Quy, a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army caught in the Agent Orange sprays along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, now suffers from cancer. His two children are born with birth defects, the son’s face moves in spasms and his daughter cannot speak.

Thirty years after the end of the war, “hot spots”, locations where the dioxin contamination are dangerously high, still dot the landscape in parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. These “hot spots” are mainly former US airbases and military installations. Bien Hoa is a case in point.

Barely fifteen miles from Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, Bien Hoa was used as a major ammunition and Agent Orange stockpile. In the late 1960’s, more than 7,500 gallons of the defoliant were spilled by accident. Today, some samples of sediment and soil from the area register TCDD level as high as 600,000 per trillion. Human samples from around the country show an average of 2ppt., but at least 20 samples in Bien Hoa reached 271 ppt. More disturbingly, some of the people affected either lived elsewhere or were not even born when the spill occurred, suggesting that the exposure continues today and once affected, the contamination crosses generations.

In the United States, there was a half-hearted attempt at resolving the Agent Orange problems for veterans. In 1984 seven chemical companies settled a class-action suit by Vietnam vets. The companies paid out $180 million, and by 1997, when the last payments were made, some 291,000 people had received benefits. On the other hand, veterans from the Republic of Vietnam (the South), allies of the United States during the war, are still not eligible for help, even if they now live in the U.S.

In Vietnam, victims suffer an additional layer of pain: ostracism. In a society of deep poverty and ignorance about dioxin, and in a culture steeped in Buddhist teachings of reincarnation, of “nhan qua” (seed to fruit, literally, or cause and effect), people often spurn the victims, preferring to believe that they, or their parents, are paying the price for their ancestors’, or their own, misdeeds in previous lives. This psychological burden has been lightened somewhat in recent years, as the campaign to help Agent Orange victims becomes more successful in educating the public; but much remains to be done.

In 2004, Dr. Phi Phi and three other victims brought a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn against the chemical companies, alleging that they knew of the long-term and deadly effects of dioxin and by supplying Agent Orange to the Pentagon, they committed war crimes. The companies adopted, in effect, the German defense at Nuremberg, that they were ordered to provide defoliants for the war effort. The U.S. Government, though not a defendant, intervened on behalf of the chemical companies, claiming that the executive power to wage future wars would be severely diminished if the courts interfered by holding the suppliers liable.

In March this year, Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, not because the plaintiffs’ case lacked merit, but because the herbicide was not considered a poison when it was used in the 1960’s, and therefore the companies did not violate any international law. Plaintiffs, however, alleged that the companies did know that dioxin was highly toxic when they provided it to the government, and wished to present evidence to that effect; but they were not allowed to do so. It is also worth noting that the same Judge Weinstein, in the same courthouse, presided over the settlement in 1984 for the chemical companies to pay $180 million to U.S. veterans, without admitting guilt.

The Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange have appealed the court’s decision and a petition is being circulated in support of this lawsuit, already with 700,000 signatures worldwide, mostly from Vietnam. www.PetitionOnline.com/AOVN/petition.html

As we commemorated recently the end of a war that still ravages Vietnam and polarizes the United States, is it too much to demand that our government investigate, and if necessary repair the damages caused by Agent Orange? In Vietnam as well as among Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese-Americans?

We cannot undo the past, but we can alleviate the suffering of the current victims, and there is still the possibility of preventing future destruction.

For more information, contact:
www.ffrd.org/Lawsuit/Lawsuit.htm
www.vava.org.vn
www.vn-agentorange.org
Constantin Kokkoris, the lead attorney for the Plaintiffs : cpk@kokkorislaw.com
Vu-Duc Vuong is a teacher and writer in the Bay Area. Email him at vuduc.vuong@gmail.com