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Newsday
[Melville, NY]
November
17, 2005
Los Angeles Times
November 27, 2005 Sunday
Bulldog Edition
SECTION: MAIN NEWS; National Desk; Part A; Pg. 28
LENGTH: 696 words
BODY:
They were enemies on Vietnam's battlefields, but the two Vietnamese
nationals and some American veterans have something in common:
They suffer from illnesses they say were caused by Agent Orange.
Dang Hong Nhut and Ho Sy Hai are bringing their stories to the
American public in an 11-city tour. They hope to garner support
for their efforts to seek compensation from the U.S. government
and the chemical companies that produced the herbicide.
"American veterans got compensation, I am hopeful that we'll
be treated equally," Dang, 68, said in an interview in Manhattan.
David Cline, 58, of Jersey City, a Vietnam veteran who is president
of Veterans for Peace, believes the Vietnamese should receive
compensation. "We see this as a humanitarian and a moral
issue," he said at a meeting with the Vietnamese.
Dang, who supported the Viet Cong, is a plaintiff in a class-action
suit against chemical manufacturers that was rejected in February.
U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn dismissed the suit,
which covered as many as 4 million alleged victims, saying the
use of the herbicide during the Vietnam War did not violate international
law. The Vietnamese are appealing.
During the war, about 12 million gallons of the defoliant were
sprayed over South Vietnam. Agent Orange was intended to kill
plants and strip leaves from trees in an effort to deprive the
enemy of cover. Ned Foote, president of the Vietnam Veterans of
America's New York chapter, said he supported the Vietnamese effort
but first wanted the manufacturers to provide compensation for
American soldiers still suffering, and dying, from the dioxin's
effects.
"I personally don't hold any grudges against them,"
he said. "They fought their war; we fought ours."
In 1965, Ho, now 64, was delivering supplies to North Vietnamese
troops advancing into South Vietnam. Ho remembered U.S. planes
spraying herbicide along the supply route, known as the Ho Chi
Minh Trail. He and fellow soldiers drank the contaminated water
and bathed in it."We were living with the defoliant every
day. We didn't have a choice," Ho said.
Toward the end of the war, Ho married, and he and his wife, also
a soldier, wanted to start a family. Her first two pregnancies
ended in miscarriages, Ho said. She then gave birth to a healthy
baby boy, who became deaf and stopped talking at age 6.
In 1973 they had another boy, who was born healthy but at 8 months
couldn't hold down his food. At 3, he too became deaf, Ho said.
The third child, a girl, was healthy until she turned 5, Ho said.
Her glands swelled, and she died.
In 1980, the couple, who live in the northeastern province of
Thai Binh, had another boy, who became mentally ill at 20. Ho
learned in 1989 that he has diabetes and prostate cancer, two
diseases the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes as
linked to Agent Orange.
In May of 1965, Dang was living in Cu Chi -- a suburb of Saigon,
which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war -- when she witnessed
American airplanes dropping the defoliant on the district, leaving
behind a terrible odor and a whitish substance on the leaves."I
thought I was going to be killed instantly or in one or two days,"
recalled Dang, who still lives in Ho Chi Minh City.
For the month she lived in Cu Chi, Dang drank water from the
stream and used it for cooking. She ate vegetables dusted with
the dioxin, not knowing its harmful effects.
Dang said she had three miscarriages between 1973 and 1980. A
fourth child was stillborn and seriously deformed, she said. In
recent years, doctors have removed tumors from her intestine and
thyroid. Like Ho, Dang blames her miscarriages and health problems
on Agent Orange. In 1960, before she was exposed to the dioxin,
Dang gave birth to a healthy boy, now a grown man with two healthy
daughters of his own.
Ho and Dang want help for future generations in Vietnam, who
continue to suffer the effects of the dioxin, which remains in
the soil.
"We hope to share our suffering and our pain with the American
veterans. Together, we may find the quickest and the fastest solution
to this problem," Ho said. "That's what I hope for from
the trip."
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