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Counting to Three Million by Ones

by Paul Cox
Originally published in the March 2009 Newsletter

Paul Cox with Vietnam's legendary Nguyen Thi Binh

We had walked about a kilometer mile between paddies, fishponds, and scattered farmhouses after abandoning our car because the asphalt-paved dike path had became too narrow. We stopped at the iron gate in a lichen-covered concrete wall surrounding a farmhouse. My hosts, Ho Si Hai and Mr. Phong were surprised that the gate was locked. A neighbor came by, reported that Farmer Tat was working in his nearby field, and went to retrieve him.

With moist eyes, Mr. Duan Ton Tat held a photo of his daughter, Dam. She died a week before our visit. In 1969 Tat had been a soldier sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to war in the south to reunite their land. He had never been in the south before, and the view he got was one of death and destruction; but his country needed him, and like nearly every young man (and many women) of Thai Binh Province a hundred kilometers southeast of Hanoi, he did his duty. He survived, returning in 1975 to farming in the same area his family had lived in for generations. Farming was hard and the years after the war were harder, with widespread hunger threatening to descend into starvation.

Eventually, things got better. Farming once again became a means to make a living. Tat married, built a house for his bride, and in 1987 they had a daughter. However, Dam had physical deformities, and her skin was not right. She was covered with sores and her skin constantly cracked and flaked off. As she grew, it also became clear that she was mentally retarded. She required constant, 24-7 care—a severe burden on a poor family. After twenty-one years of pain and confusion, Dam died of a skin infection.

Duan Ton Tat holds photo of his late daughter, Dam.

Mr. Tat spent much time in herbicidepoisoned areas during his war in the south. He never had the money or access to technology to diagnose—much less treat—his daughter’s multiple health problems; he and his wife just took care of Dam as best they could, so it is unproven that Dam was a victim of her father’s exposure to dioxin so many years before. However, Dam’s mental retardation and deformities are classic symptoms of Agent Orange/dioxin poisoning. Skin lesions of the type that plagued Dam all her life have not been scientifically pinned to dioxin exposures, but… Standing at her shrine in Tat’s two-room farmhouse, we lit incense and made offerings of food, entreating her spirit to be at peace. Her death was a twist on the awful asymmetry of war that dictates that the children precede their parents in death.

Our visit with Mr. Tat was just one of nearly a dozen emotional, enlightening, and enraging encounters in as many days during my visit to Vietnam in December—my first visit since the war. I was in a three-person delegation from the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC) (a project of VFP started by David Cline) that attended the first national congress of the Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin (VAVA) in Hanoi. At the Congress VAVA chose a new president, seated a new board, and heard of the support work of the international delegations from the US, France, and Britain. Afterwards, our delegation visited VAVA chapters and Agent Orange care facilities in and around Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Danang.

In 1998, a World Health Organization study estimated that Vietnam has one million handicapped children. While the study did not differentiate between Agent Orange victims, and other handicaps, it is clear that a very large number of children born 15, 20, 30 years after the end of herbicide spraying in 1971 are handicapped because of their parents’ exposure to dioxin. Meanwhile, their exposed parents and grandparents are falling ill in large numbers from exposure. Diabetes and cancers are rampant among older people, many of whom also have handicapped children; and many are dying because of the war, even these many years after it ended. The Vietnamese scientific community estimates that 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange and 3 million are ill and handicapped from their exposure.

These are statistics. Numbers. But each single individual that collectively comprises 3 million has an entire universe of existence that includes a home, a family, and a community. Mr. Tat’s solitary sadness at his only child’s illness and premature death sums up the pain of 3 million and their universes.

This year, some sympathetic congressmembers will draft legislation to provide signifi cant assistance to the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. VFP and the Campaign will need your assistance to make certain your representatives support this legislation. For more information, please go to the VAORRC website at www.vn-agentorange.org.