In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a kind of collective, self-imposed amnesia washed over the United States. With the exception of the Civil War, Vietnam had been America’s most divisive conflict. George Mizo realized that those who fought in and those who fought against the war might never reconcile their differences. Politicians and historians would write books, soldiers would write poetry, memoirs, and novels, Hollywood would try to make the Oscar-winning film about Vietnam. The Vietnamese would be blamed for the war, demonized, and forgotten.
George believed that he’d earned the right to speak out not just against the Vietnam War, but war itself. In 1986, George Mizo, Duncan Murphy, Brian Willson, and Medal of Honor winner Charles Litkey fasted for forty-seven days upon the steps of the nation’s capitol to protest US involvement in Nicaragua. George talked about the Nuremberg Principles that, he said, obligate citizens to take direct action if and when their government violates international law. He spoke about his love and respect for the Vietnamese people; the government that sent him to kill and possibly die in Vietnam now sent him to prison for his anti-war actions.
George knew he was living on borrowed time, and he wanted to leave a legacy of peace to a people he’d learned to respect and love. So he and a few friends decided to create a community for Agent Orange victims in Vietnam. Friendship Village would be about hope, healing, and reconciliation. It would be a place where children and Vietnamese veterans suffering from exposure to Agent Orange could live in a caring, comfortable, loving environment.
Friendship Village, said George, “would be a living symbol of the potential for transformation. And it would show that people can make a difference.”
Young man in Friendship Village.
George Mizo died around the time that the Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Center for Children’s Health and the Environment released a series of reports on the effects of chemicals like dioxin on young children.
In one article, “Johnny Can’t Read, Sit Still, or Stop Hitting the Neighbor’s Kid. Why?” researchers write:
Studies show that lead, mercury, industrial chemicals, and certain pesticides cross the placenta and enter the brain of the developing fetus where they can cause learning and behavioral disabilities. This is true in young animals—and in young children.9
Researchers have discovered DDT (long banned in the United States), as well as other toxic chemicals—heptachlor, chlordane, mirex, dieldrin, benzene, and chloroform—in mothers’ milk.
We know that during gestation and in the early months after birth, an infant’s brain is particularly susceptible to harm from toxic chemicals. We don’t know what the minimum safe levels of exposure are. It may be that no exposure is safe…. We know that occupational exposure to PCBs, dioxin, and other POPs has been linked to several cancers and to a broad range of reproductive problems, including birth defects in offspring.10
At the grand opening of Friendship Village in October 1998, Lt. General Tran Van Quang, the officer who planned and fought in the battle that seriously wounded George Mizo and killed his entire unit, joined Vice President Madam Binh and George in the ribbon-cutting celebration. Through years of planning and trying to raise money for Friendship Village, George and General Quang had become close friends. On October 30, 2000, George Mizo, his wife Rosi Hohn-Mizo, and George Doussin of France were awarded Vietnam’s first ever State Medal of Friendship. After the ceremonies, General Vo Nguyen Giap, senior military commander during the French and American wars, met privately with the recipients. General Giap, a man who’d spent his entire life fighting for Vietnam’s independence, took twelve-year-old Michael Mizo in his arms.
“Michael,” he said. “Never go to war.”
Soon after George Mizo died at his home in the village of Hofen, Germany, on March 18, 2002, his wife and son sent out a message of love for the man who’d devoted his life to helping victims of chemical warfare: “Peace is giving something to life… Your spirit is living in our hearts and in the Vietnam Friendship Village.”
One of the boys in the classroom, a twenty-one-year-old man in a seven-year-old child’s body, picks up a shape, stares at it for a minute, then drops it back into the bowl. Other children stare at the shapes, expecting them, it seems, to come alive.
“Yes,” says their teacher. “Those are puzzles. It’s hard for these children. Sometimes it takes them a year to solve one.”
As our taxi navigates Hanoi’s crowded streets, Brendan and I discuss how we’d like to use his photographs. We do not wish to portray these children as freaks of nature. Nor do we intend to exploit their physical handicaps and mental deficiencies. We have fallen in love with the children at Friendship Village, not out of pity, but because they are beautiful human beings. Chemical warfare has left them with deformities and limited intelligence, but it did not—and cannot—strip them of their humanity.
CHAPTER 3
Promises
The United States has renounced the first use of incapacitating chemical weapons.
The United States has renounced any use of biological and toxin weapons.
—Richard M. Nixon, August 19, 1970
HANOI, VIETNAM
Another broiling day on the streets of Hanoi: women squatting on the sidewalk, peeling coconuts, cutting up jackfruit, slicing pineapples; early morning clumps of people seated on tiny stools, dipping chopsticks into bowls of noodles; a million motorbikes and taxis honking in a mad, cacophonic, yet somehow orderly rush to reach their destinations. Hanoi, capital of a united Vietnam, city of lakes, pounded for years by waves of fighter planes and B-52s, the resting place of Ho Chi Minh, who lies in a mausoleum guarded by stone-faced Vietnamese soldiers wearing starched white uniforms.
In Hanoi, Water Puppets dressed in bright Vietnamese costumes fight dragons, go fishing, and clash in maritime battles. Beautiful women at outdoor markets sell fresh fruits and vegetables, shrimp, and dog meat. Little stands sell glasses of fresh-squeezed sugar cane juice, and it’s a short cab ride from the old city to Hoalo Prison, a dark, dreary, miserable sprawl of dungeons built by the French in 1896 to hold those Vietnamese accused of resisting colonialism. From August 5, 1964 to March 13, 1973, American fliers shot down over Hanoi and the surrounding regions were held in Hoalo prison, which they jokingly called “the Hanoi Hilton.”
We pass Hoan Kiem Lake, where people of all ages gather at dawn to stroll together, stretch to music, and perform gentle dance routines—each one with its own style. Waving bright red fans, groups of women practice Tai Chi, while other early risers pray or meditate. Residents of Hanoi seem to agree with Ho Chi Minh’s philosophy that exercise is a good means of maintaining physical and mental health.
Legend has it that in the fifteenth century, King Le Loi was boating on this green lake when a great tortoise rose from the water, took a magical sword from the king’s belt, and swam into the depths to return the sword to the Dragon King. A two-story structure with pointed Gothic arches and a tiled cupola appears to float upon the lake. Thap Rua, or Turtle Tower, honors the magic turtle that still guards King Le Loi’s sword. At one point during their sixty-four-year-long occupation of Vietnam, French colonialists placed a model of the Statue of Liberty on top of Turtle Tower. Resistance fighters responded by hoisting the revolutionary flag next to Lady Liberty. When the Tran Trong Kim government assumed control of the city in 1945, the statue came down.
By the time we reach the top of the stairs, we are guzzling water and drowning in sweat. Dr. Prof. Nguyen Trong Nhan greets us with the unassuming courtesy that Vietnamese show visitors. From 1954 until recently, Dr. Nhan was the director at this hospital where he now maintains a two-room office. “Now,” he laughs, “I can try to get something done.”
An assistant brings iced Vietnamese coffee, and we settle into chairs across from a huge mural of the snow-clad Rocky Mountains.
“You see, George H. Bush,” smiles Dr. Nhan, pointing to a photograph in which he stands next to George W. Bush’s father. “And Bill Clinton,” he says,
gesturing to a picture of himself and President Clinton. Ho Chi Minh also adorns Dr. Nhan’s walls, but a good distance away from the two American presidents.
In a smaller room piled high with books and papers, there’s a black and white photo of four handsome young men.
“My brothers. I’m on the right. Twenty-three years old, in Division 312, which began and finished the battle of Dienbienphu. Before the battle began, I was sent to study in medical school. At the center, that’s my cousin from Division 308. He died in the battle at Dienbienphu. The center, low, is my young brother from Division 320, and he died in North Delta. He was twenty years old and the doctor of a battalion. On the left, that’s my older brother from Division 308. He died from disease in Hanoi after the victory at Dienbienphu.
“We all served in our Vietnam People’s Army during the war against French aggression. All my brothers were more intelligent than me, and they died. During the war against US aggression, I worked as a doctor in Hanoi. Only in 1976, after the victory on April 30, 1975, did I visit the south.”
At the International Conference of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, Hanoi, March 2006, Dr. Nhan, acting as vice president of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange, (VAVA), spoke about Vietnam’s long struggle for independence, the nation’s remarkable recovery and development, and the fact that Vietnam and its people continue to suffer from “severe war wounds left behind by the largest chemical warfare in mankind’s history.”1
Dr. Nhan went on to say that in the early 1970s, “researchers from Harvard University found high levels of dioxin in Vietnamese mothers’ breast milk.” Thirty-five years later, Professor Arnold Schecter and his Vietnamese counterpart, Prof. Le Cao Dai, discovered high levels of dioxin in Vietnamese living near a former military zone and in the fatty tissues of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims.
Most “painful and dangerous,” said Dr. Nhan, “is that dioxin infects not only one generation, but also several. Despite the war already ended [sic] for more than thirty years, we have witnessed severe congenital malformation…. It is worth noting that in the years of the 1990s, the studies done by certain US scientists found the presence of dioxin in the sperm of the Vietnam-American veterans. This explains the toxicities of the male productive cell deformities. During pregnancy and after birth, dioxin in blood and milk continues to harm fetus, and newborn.”2
On August 6, 2004, Dr. Nhan forwarded To The American People, an Open Letter, asking Americans to support the Vietnamese class action lawsuit charging the chemical manufacturers of Agent Orange with war crimes.
“With sincere and friendly sentiments, from a far-away land of the West Pacific Ocean,” the letter opens, “we would like to send this letter to all of you. It is written on the pending day of August 10, when the US aircrafts, in 1961, began the spraying of herbicides in Vietnam with the northern areas of Kontum as their first target.”3
In 2006, the Anthropology Review published a special issue on “Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin in Vietnam,” in which contributor Le Thi writes: “According to statistics of Kontum General Hospital in 1999, there were 12 defect or monstrous births. Popular [most frequent] cases are children born without anus, or chest or belly-linked twins. Some children were born without belly skin and all their intestines and livers are exposed. The highest number of birth defects is seen in the two districts of Sa Thay and Dak To.”
In the same article, Dr. Nguyen Anh Tu, from Kontum Provincial Health Department, discusses the cases he has seen:
Mrs. Nguyen Thi Tra is from Trung Dung village. In 1979, she gave birth to a big bundle containing dust particles. In the same year, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Nho from Hoa Binh village (Sa Nghia Commune) gave birth to a bundle full of eggs…. In the northern province of Thai Binh, there are now 20,000 victims of Agent Orange. In Quynh Phu district alone, 8,000 people are Agent Orange victims, including 129 are from the third generation. Mr. Nguyen Bach Le in Quynh Hoang Commune took part in the battlefields of Quang Tri. He got married after being demobilized. His son, Nguyen Ba Hau, is now 35 years old but he is only 1 meter tall, with very short limbs. Hau is now married. His first son is normal but his second son is defected like him. His second son is now 12 years old but is only eighty cm tall with a distorted face. In Mr. Le’s family, three generations have been affected by Agent Orange.4
Le Thi writes about an ex-soldier whose first child went blind when he was one month old, and who grew up severely retarded; a second child “looks monstrous,” his legs, (one long, one short) shrinking, his hands “very long and thin.” A third child is also a “monster” who looks exactly like his younger brother.
“In my family,” said the children’s father, “there is always a fight with my children screaming all the night. After nearly 30 years since peace has been restored in the country, we have not experienced a single day of peace.”5
Another soldier returned to his native village and got married after the war. In 1977, his wife gave birth to a “7-month headless and limbless foetus whose eyes are on his neck. Her second birth was a piece of pink flesh looked like worms intertwining together. Her third monstrous birth was a hairy monkey and the fourth one was a bundle of tumors.”6
In another case, a soldier’s wife gave birth to a child with two faces. This child died after three months.
Their second child had a pig face and their third child a mouse face. All of them died after birth. The fourth child was born normal, but when it was 8 months old, its face became red and died. Their fifth child, a normal son, but suffering from mental disorder, screaming all the times and tearing everything he can. He even bit his own body to satisfy his craziness. He is 23 years old now with Mrs. Tuu caring for him throughout all those years. She said: “I have nothing in my life, except tears.”7
From the early days of the defoliation campaign, Dr. Nhan explained, scientists tried to warn of the possible consequences of using herbicides in Vietnam. Many prestigious American and world researchers opposed the spraying, including Professor Arthur Galston, a biologist at Harvard, the US Physiobotanist Association, and 5,000 other US scientists, including seventeen Nobel laureates and 129 members of the US National Academy of Sciences.
“The war is over,” writes Dr. Nhan in his Open Letter to the American People, “but while the country has made remarkable progress since the fighting ended, millions of people are suffering from incurable diseases related to exposure to dioxin. Thousands of people have already died in agony with deep indignation towards the perpetrators of crimes. Many women have suffered reproductive complications and even the total loss of the right to be a mother.”8
The letter expresses sorrow that children who had nothing to do with the war will be “born with inherited diseases, and, of course, without the smallest hope of enjoying even a minute of happiness of living like an ordinary being. The victims of Agent Orange/dioxin are the most miserable and tragic people. Many of them, with lots of deformed offspring, have barely survived in poverty.”9
The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA) wants the American people to know that the Vietnamese “thirst for peace and friendship, and have exerted great patience, hoping the United States will cooperate in solving the cruel war consequences, especially those severe evils resulting from horrible chemical warfare.”10
Faced with the US government’s intransigence and apparent indifference to their plight, the Vietnamese people were forced to file a lawsuit against companies that “gained enormous profits from the sufferings of millions of people.”
Agent Orange advocates like Dr. Nhan want people to know that the lawsuit is designed not just to help Vietnamese people, but other victims of Agent Orange as well, including veterans in the United States, Australia, the Republic of South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, and the Republic of the Philippines.
The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange concludes its letter by assuring its former adversary that the Vietnamese have “never harbored any sense of hatred for the American people…. T
he present struggle is directly aimed at the peaceful and happy life of our future generations on this planet.”11
Long before the American war ended, Dr. Nhan began to notice that people who’d lived or fought in defoliated areas of Vietnam experienced more difficulty recovering from illnesses than those who had remained in the North during the fighting. Patients suffering from a single ailment generally recovered; however, other patients deteriorated rapidly, and no remedy could be found to restore them to health. Something was undermining these terminally ill patients’ immune systems. After careful study, Dr. Nhan concluded that many people had been exposed to dioxin, and that this chemical was killing them.
Certain that millions of Vietnamese people were suffering from the legacies of chemical warfare, Dr Nhan established the fund for Agent Orange victims in 1998. That fund now belongs to VAVA. He also realized that the symptoms of Agent Orange illness are similar to HIV, and he learned that President Clinton wanted to help victims of AIDS.
“So you see, when President Clinton came to Vietnam in 2000, I said to him that Agent Orange sickness is very similar to AIDS. Later, in his letter to me, Mr. Clinton agreed that we should engage in humanitarian activities, and that we ought to develop cooperation between our two countries to help Agent Orange victims.
“After that, he established a foundation to help Vietnam fight against the spread of AIDS. But he did not help Agent Orange victims. I asked him, ‘Why won’t you help us? You agree with me that we should have cooperation and humanitarian activities between our two countries, to help Agent Orange victims. But now you don’t want to help these victims? Why not?’
“I explained that like AIDS victims, people who’ve been exposed to Agent Orange suffer from immune deficiency. So why wouldn’t he help Agent Orange victims who suffer from the same thing as people who are sick and dying from AIDS?
Scorched Earth Page 4
