By Danielie Trussoni
In the spring of 1999, I went to Vietnam. I was a tourist,
though my trip was not a post-college vacation involving tanning
oil and beach chairs and oozing hangovers suffered under the shade
of palm trees.
I traveled to Vietnam as the daughter of a veteran, a man who
had spent his adult lifetime dealing with his experiences in the
war. Making the journey to Vietnam was important for me, but at the
time, I couldn't quite formulate how.
In the weeks I spent in Vietnam, I went to the places where my
father had seen action, mostly in the south, in Cu Chi and Tay
Ninh, areas not far from Ho Chi Minh City. The region was so thick
with foliage one would never suspect that in an effort to expose
the Vietcong by destroying their environment, the United States
sprayed about 19.5 million gallons of Agent Orange and other toxic
herbicides over the jungles of South Vietnam.
As I traveled the region, I knew about Agent Orange, just as I
knew that an environmental cleanup effort was still under way, and
yet it was hard to believe. The foliage was lush and green,
seemingly untouched by the noxious chemicals of the war.
I had seen a video of the C-123 cargo planes swooping low, just
above a blanket of crenellated canopy, the fusillade of white
clouds fanning out, pretty as powdered sugar. The chemicals worked
through the top layers of foliage, moving down to the rice paddies
and sinking into the red soil. In the video, the defoliant appeared
almost tonic, like cool talcum powder falling from heaven.
My father walked in the wake of those planes. He remembered the
defoliants' descent over the jungle, slow as snow. He recalled the
white coated leaves, the way his throat burned when he breathed the
humid air, the strange discoloration he found when he blew his
nose. He remembered bathing in a bomb crater, dead birds floating
on the surface.
Last year, after five years fighting throat cancer that he and
his doctors attributed to exposure to the dioxin in Agent Orange,
my father died. He was 61.
During my trip, I visited a museum dedicated to remembering what
the Vietnamese call the American War. Exhibits on the effects of
Agent Orange make up a significant part of the permanent
collection. There were numbers and charts and statistics,
run-of-the-mill data, but there were also pictures of babies born
of parents exposed to Agent Orange. Their deformities were
gruesome, making them appear bestial, inhuman. Years after my trip,
these are the images I remember most vividly.
On Monday, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, in New York,
heard oral arguments against Dow, Monsanto, and 35 other companies
that manufactured Agent Orange and related herbicides used during
the Vietnam War. In addition, 16 appeals by American veterans were
heard, as well as an appeal by a group that represents Vietnamese
victims of Agent Orange.
The veterans and the Vietnamese are seeking the reinstatement of
lawsuits dismissed in March 2005 by Judge Jack Weinstein of the US
District Court in Brooklyn, New York. The plaintiffs are asking the
court to acknowledge that Agent Orange has damaged the lives of
thousands of people in both the United States and Vietnam.
One of the Vietnamese civilians taking part in this appeal is a
woman named Dang Hong Nhut. She lived in Cu Chi during the war, the
very same part of Vietnam where my father spent his tour.
After losing numerous babies to miscarriage and deformity, Dang
Hong Nhut sent a biopsy abroad for analysis. The results showed
that, years after the war, her body still retained traces of
dioxin. In a television interview, she said: "It doesn't matter if
the companies won't admit their crimes. What really counts is that
people see that a crime took place."
It has been eight years since I went to Vietnam, and I am just
starting to understand that my trip was less about changing the
past, an impossible pursuit by any stretch of the imagination, and
more about taking the time to understand and recognize the mistakes
of the Vietnam War. Perhaps now, after 40 years, the victims of
Agent Orange will finally get such recognition.
Danielle Trussoni is the author of Falling Through the
Earth: A Memoir. The New York Times
(China Daily June 21, 2007)
