The event began with the moderator explaining that this was the last stop on for the Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims tour of the USA. They had made many stops, including Midland Michigan, Washington DC, and other places. Click her picture to read the info handout they gave me that covered the material quite well. Then she introduced the guy from San Francisco's government, who read a proclamation signed by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. The proclamation acknowledged the serious nature of the agent orange issue and expressed support for bringing the issue to light. Then she introduced Tran Xuan Thu, the delegation leader.

  



He began by  thanking the many friends that had helped out during the tour. He spoke in  Vietnamese, and his words were translated by Hoang Cong Thuy, who is standing to the left of the delegation leader in the above picture. They continued that it had been an honor to talk to two Congressmen in Washington, DC and that they are hopeful something good will come of the discussion. Dr. Thu expressed disappointment that the judge had ruled against them in the class action lawsuit, but they were optimistic that the decision would be overturned on appeal.



Hong said a few words, but her voice was very bad. She was obviously having trouble saying anything. The moderator moved us on, explaining that she was painfully exhausted and somewhat sickened by the grueling trip.

  

Nguyen described finding out he had serious health problems when he had been sent to a doctor during middle school. Since then he has been unable to attend school or work. His problems are compounded by the fact that his father is also developing health problems now. The medicines are very expensive, and they have difficulty paying for them.

  

A ripple went through the audience when this guy talked about his stillborn child. I got this feeling that there must be a lot of Agent Orange/Dioxin victims in Viet Nam if they can cherry pick three eloquent speakers with serious health problems to show us here.

  

I remember this guy talking about the extreme difficulty of getting by without being able to work. He complained that one of the most difficult parts was figuring out ways to pay for all the medicines he and his children need to stay alive.

     

This guy is an influential member of the San Francisco Veterans for Peace Chapter. He expressed his belief that Agent Orange is the worst chemical weapon known to man. He feels that we owe the people we sprayed with the stuff something, and this tour is all about spreading awareness of the issue. Unfortunately, the Agent Orange Committee had managed to rack up a $20,000 plus debt paying for the tour of the Agent Orange witnesses. Most of the money went into flying people around, feeding them, and paying for hotels. He urged us all to dig into our pockets to help defray expenses. After they passed around collection plates the moderator opened the floor for questions and comments from the audience.

     

This woman said she sees a lot of parallels between what happened with Agent Orange and the victims of radioactive fallout in Nagasaki. She also sees parallels with the DU situation in Iraq. She wanted to know if the Agent Orange committee had done any reaching out to the other groups.

The woman in blue said yes, every chance they get Iraq Veterans are invited to speak on the same platforms they get, and the other groups are also on their radar. Then she explained that they had visited Midland, Michigan because that was the home of Dow Chemical, where Agent Orange/Dioxin had been manufactured. People there were dealing with the same health problems the Vietnamese people are dealing with. One of the reasons so much of the stuff had been used in Viet Nam was that Dow had lied about how persistent and awful the stuff was. There are also Agent Orange/dioxin hot spots in Columbia (where cocoa crops were sprayed) and other places. They are looking at ways to use this issue to bridge between the domestic and international environmental justice movements.

This guy wanted to know if Viet Nam is healing. The delegation leader explained that most places which were just sprayed with Agent Orange/Dioxin were getting steadily better. Enough time had passed that the rain had washed away much of the stuff, and the half life of Agent Orange/Dioxin was short enough that much of the rest has decomposed into more harmless compounds. The remaining problem is in places where large tanks of the stuff were dumped for one reason or another. Those toxic hot spots are still causing problems, and they need to be cleaned up.

     

The man in the white shirt said that he had been a medical corpsman in Viet Nam, and one time a helicopter had accidentally dumped an entire tank of Agent Orange on their hospital. He had a rash for days after that incident, and since that time a lot of the people he knew then had died of one health problem or another. I think he said that he also has health problems now. He mainly wanted the delegation to know that some of us are suffering to.

This guy made a speech the gist of which was that the North Vietnamese government lies about everything and how can you trust what anybody who gets along with that regime says? I think he was a South Vietnamese Partisan, and still hasn't stopped fighting the Viet Nam War. After he had gone on for a while the crowd shouted him down.

This guy said that he had been a South Vietnamese Soldier fighting the Communists. He commanded a group that would cut down tall trees so the American helicopters could spray the area. One time his crew had been sprayed, and since the rash had healed he had been okay. He asked how could Agent Orange/dioxin be a problem if he didn't have the symptoms. Tran Thu explained to him that Agent Orange/Dioxin only gets a percentage of the people sprayed, and maybe you were one of the lucky ones. The moderator named several activists she had known that had died from Agent Orange related problems.

     

The guy in the checkered sweater described living through the symptoms of being sprayed with Agent Orange/Dioxin, and said that he also had known people whose death had been premature, and probably caused by it.

I think this woman mainly said she was ashamed of the lies our government used to justify using Agent Orange/Dioxin and everything else about the Viet Nam War.

This guy asked "How can Viet Nam export food when the place is contaminated with Agent Orange/Dioxin?" The delegation leader said people in places that are known hot spots are urged not to eat food grown there, and no food from those areas is exported.