Ghosts of Agent Orange: The notorious defoliant continues to ravage generations of Vietnamese

by Emily Green | 10 May 2014

Former Marine and member of Portland’s Veterans for Peace chapter, Dan Shea knows the lasting effects of the Vietnam War all too well. In 1977 his first child was born with a number of birth defects that he believes were the result of his exposure to Agent Orange. His son, Casey, came into the world with a cleft palate, congenital heart disease and no abdominal walls. Shortly after birth he suffered a seizure, but eventually was able to come home and live a happy childhood, playing often with his younger sister between doctors visits. In 1981 Casey went into a coma after a 10-hour heart surgery. For seven weeks Shea and his wife hoped for a miracle every day as they sat at their son’s bedside. But a miracle never came and they ultimately decided to take Casey off the respirator. Shortly thereafter he died in his father’s arms. He was three years old.

Shea’s story is familiar to others survivors of the Vietnam War, American and Vietnamese, and the ongoing effects of Agent Orange that continue to this day.

The subject now comes to a wider audience on May 18 in Portland with the world premiere of the documentary “Lighter than Orange.”

The premiere is part of the Full Disclosure Film Festival, May 17 and 18, at Fifth Avenue Cinema. The event includes several documentaries that examine the American war in Vietnam. The festival is part of a nationwide effort by Veterans for Peace to ensure that the horrors of the Vietnam War and its long-term effects, still felt today by many American and Vietnamese citizens, are not forgotten.

While the loss of a child is the most difficult effect he’s endured, Shea has suffered from the psychological effects of war too. Like so many relatives of Vietnam veterans in the U.S., he watched post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) destroy a family member, his brother Michael, who was also a Marine in the Vietnam War. Shortly after Shea was shipped to the Philippines with jungle rot on his feet, his brother was sent on an operation in his place.

“They brought him home in a straight jacket,” said Shea. “He self-medicated over the years with drugs and alcohol; later it was mainly alcohol.” Shea’s brother died in 2010 of liver problems. The brothers had grown apart because, Shea said, he didn’t want to be around a drunk. Luckily they were able to reconnect in the end. Shea also lives with PTSD as a result of the war. “I relive those experiences every day of my life. I go to therapy once a month for post-traumatic stress. Each veteran’s story is different, but those are the stories that is Full Disclosure.”

Today, Shea is a member of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign committee, which is working to pass legislation that would extend medical assistance to more individuals affected by the use of herbicides in Vietnam. While Shea blames Agent Orange for his son’s death, the Department of Veterans Affairs does not recognize birth defects such as the ones Casey had as being a result of serving in Vietnam — unless the child is born to a female veteran.

While tens of thousands of Americans were exposed to herbicides like Agent Orange during the war, studies estimate that between 2.1 million and 4.8 million Vietnamese were also exposed, and many continue to be exposed because the toxins are still present in many areas of Vietnam.

Vietnam Veterans of America, a congressionally chartered veterans group with more than 70,000 members in 48 states, is in the midst of its own Agent Orange campaign. It is currently hosting a series of meetings across the U.S. titled “Faces of Orange,” which are intended to make Vietnam veterans aware of the illnesses and birth defects associated with Agent Orange so that they can get help if they or their children are affected. Meetings in Oregon took place last week, and there will be a meeting in Seattle on May 10. So far, 10 states have hosted Faces of Orange town hall meetings, but the VVA hopes to see more chapters sign up.

The documentary “Lighter Than Orange” poignantly shows a Vietnamese perspective on the legacy of Agent Orange. Directed by Matthias Leupold, a German photographer and professor living in Berlin, the film profiles Vietnamese veterans who continue to suffer from their exposure to the toxic herbicide that the U.S. military sprayed across their land. Many of these men and women also have children who were born with serious birth defects caused by the poison.

One Vietnamese veteran featured in the film, Do Duc Diu has lost 12 children, all at very young ages. “They lived one or two years, then died,” he explains. Despite his misfortune, he continued to have children because as the oldest son in his family, he was supposed to have a male descendent. “I still didn’t know I was a victim of Agent Orange. Even though so many children had died, we didn’t know anything,” said Do Duc Diu. Each March, as is the custom in Vietnam, Do Duc Diu visits the shrine where all his children are buried together, and he tends to the tiny graves.

When his daughter, Do Thi Nga, became paralyzed on one side of her body when she was 8 months old, she was examined. “They told us she was an Agent Orange victim. Only then we realized it had to do with Agent Orange,” he said. He holds her in his lap as he explains her pain and illnesses. “We are trying to live and take care of her,” he says. At that moment she begins to hit herself in the head with her fist while his wife looks away from the camera.

“The 12 veterans who are being examined here stand in for the 4 million victims out there. Many children are still dying from the consequences, so of course the central topic is to point out these defoliants,” said Leupold.

Between 1961 and 1971, 19 million gallons of these defoliants — Agent Orange and other dioxin-based herbicides — were sprayed over the southern regions of Vietnam to kill the jungle’s foliage to reveal the Vietnamese soldiers hiding below.

“We are talking about genetic damages that are passed on through generations, which means this affects all countries eventually,” said Leupold.

The Institute of Medicine released a report in 2008 that stated, “It is considerably more plausible than previously believed that exposure to the herbicides sprayed in Vietnam might have caused paternally-mediated trans-generational effects.” More recent reports do not expand on this finding, but the Institute suggests that the effects of Agent Orange may be felt for generations to come.
Leupold believes his film will “open a door into this issue.”

The film’s interviews take place west of the Vietnam capital Hanoi, in Friendship Village, a housing and treatment facility for Vietnamese children and veterans who suffer from exposure to dioxin-based herbicides like Agent Orange. Many of the children are severely handicapped from birth defects passed on to them from a parent’s exposure. Some of these children have lived in the village since its inception in 1998.

After returning from a trip he made with some of his students to Friendship Village, Leupold decided to make it the subject of his first film. “I thought of the old men sitting on the floor, on the steps, and I thought that someone ought to record their biographies,” he said. “They are in their late 60s, some of them quite a bit over 70, and some of them, due to their being contaminated, if you will, are quite ill. I wanted to secure their history.”

Both Do Thi Nga and another daughter of a Vietnamese veteran featured in “Lighter than Orange” will have difficulty surviving when their parents are no longer able to take care of them. All profits and donations raised by the film will go toward giving these two girls a more sustainable future. Leupold estimates he will need to raise about $55,484 to accomplish this feat.

Portland resident Becky Luening has been involved with Friendship Village for 20 years, and today she sits on the organization’s international board. Like Shea, Luening is also a member of Veterans for Peace and took the lead in organizing the upcoming Full Disclosure Film Festival.

“It’s very hard to be a disabled person in Vietnam,” she said, explaining that not only is the country’s infrastructure not handicapped friendly, but in addition, Vietnam is “further behind Western countries in recognizing that disabilities are not something to be ashamed of.”

While the Vietnamese government provides benefits for its veterans suffering from Agent Orange-induced illnesses, it does not provide any assistance to their afflicted children.

Leupold said the focus of his next film will be a conference taking place in Germany next year under the title: “Toxic Legacies — Agent Orange as a Challenge.” The goal of the conference, he says, is “to create a memorandum for a plan requiring several billion dollars on what can be done to really help people.” He believes “Lighter Than Orange” gives decision-makers who will be in attendance arguments to convene.

“The way I see it, the entire subject of the Vietnam War is really an example of political failure, because we saw the world in a polarized way, in black and white, red and green. I think we have to get away from that kind of thinking and just look at what the tasks at hand are and how can we solve them. It’s a matter of human life, but also of the environment — it’s not only people who are important, but animals and plants too. And this conference could offer a way to start the process,” said Leupold.

In the United States, the VA recognizes a number of birth defects in the children of female soldiers who fought in Vietnam, including cleft palate and congenital heart disease — two of the disorders that Shea’s son Casey were born with — but spina bifida is the only birth effect it recognizes in the children of male soldiers. A House bill introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) last June would strike “woman” from the parental prerequisite so that any child of a Vietnam veteran affected with any of the recognized birth defects would receive benefits, regardless of whether the Vietnam veteran that parented them was a man or a woman.

Lee’s bill, The Agent Orange Relief Act of 2013, also seeks to extend assistance to Vietnamese children suffering from Agent Orange related birth defects and to Vietnamese veterans living in the United States. The ambitious bill also proposes vocational employment training and assistance to repair and rebuild substandard homes in Vietnam for affected individuals and their families.

In a statement to Street Roots about the status of her bill, congresswoman Lee said, “Despite the current political climate in Washington, I am working with my colleagues to build bipartisan support to pass this bill.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced a bill last year to establish a center to treat, diagnose and research the health conditions of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of veterans exposed to toxic substances, not only in Vietnam, but in all Armed Forces service.

To date, there is no hearing scheduled for neither Lee’s nor Blumenthal’s bill, which have both sat idly in committee review since last year.

Nationally, Veterans for Peace’s Full Disclosure movement kicked off last month with an event in Manhattan. Organizers say the Full Disclosure campaign — intended to tell the other side of the war’s legacy — will continue for the next 11 years, coinciding with the 13-year-long federal Vietnam commemoration project that was announced by President Barack Obama in 2012. This $65 million federal project is overseen by the Department of Defense.

Members of Veterans for Peace say telling their stories and hosting events like the upcoming film festival is especially important now because it fills a void left by the federal project, the United States of America Vietnam Commemoration. This federal commemoration project, they say, is an attempt by the U.S. government to rewrite history by glorifying and mythologizing the war.

Some veterans and activists say that by excluding entire elements of the Vietnam War era — the anti-war movement and the veterans who joined it, rampant drug use among soldiers, the illnesses caused by the use of herbicides and other horrific costs of war — the federal commemoration project fails to tell a complete story. They say the result of this whitewashed, patriotic version is that many lessons learned might not get passed on to future generations.

Film festival organizer and Friendship Village board member, Luening, said it’s not about what the federal commemoration is saying; it’s about what it isn’t saying. “It’s presenting facts out of context,” she said, “and it’s about glorifying that war so that kids will be inspired to fight in future wars.”

When Street Roots asked the federal commemoration’s spokesperson, Victor Lopez, if his agency plans to include any events or informative materials in its agenda regarding the lasting effects of Agent Orange and PTSD, or about the anti-war movement and veterans who joined it, he said, “Those types of issues don’t even remotely fall into what we do.”

The commemoration’s official website, www.vietnamwar50th.com, states five objectives that, summarized, basically say the intent of the federal project is to honor and pay tribute to Americans and U.S. allies who made contributions during the war. Lopez said his agency’s function is to approve requests from organizations that want to be program partners and to send them starter kits with information on how to host a commemorative event to honor and thank Vietnam veterans and their families in their area.

The commemoration’s official website also offers educational resources specifically for “teachers and students in the grades 7 to 12.” It also states that the program’s History and Education office “will develop high quality educational content for classroom use based on best practices of pedagogy.”

The educational resources available on the site include fact sheets, posters, a timeline and maps — none of which make any mention of the lasting effects of war or the anti-war movement. “This agency doesn’t deal with those particular issues,” said Lopez.

Also absent from the educational materials is any reference to the 19 million gallons of dioxin-based herbicides, including Agent Orange, that were sprayed over Vietnam in order to clear the jungle so that U.S. troops could see the enemy hiding below.

Shea, who says he lives every day with the ghosts of his deceased son and brother, as well as those lost in the war, believes that the way the nation chooses to handle the Agent Orange legacy and other lingering issues leftover from the Vietnam War, such as PTSD, sets the precedent for what veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan will have to deal with.

Like the Vietnam veterans before them, many of these younger veterans — and their descendants — may also face myriad future health problems caused by the their exposure to toxic chemicals while serving their country. Many of the long-term effects of exposure to depleted uranium, burn pits and the other hazardous materials used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are still unknown.
“If we can’t resolve the issues of 50 years ago,” said Shea, “then they will be fighting the same thing for the next 50 years.”

Now, decades after the conclusion of the war, Shea says veterans who fought in Vietnam, along with younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, continue to seek out his organization, Veterans for Peace.

Shea, along with several other local veterans and activists, will introduce discussions after each film with their own stories from the war and about how it still affects them to this day. They say they hope people leave the festival with a more complete picture of what took place during the Vietnam era, and a better understanding about the long-lasting ramifications of war, and how wars affect many people for many generations after they are over.

“We’re speaking our truth. It’s honest and sincere, and I honestly believe it does set us free,” said Shea.

Full Disclosure Film Festival
Fifth Avenue Cinema
510 SW Hall Street

Saturday, May 17
2 p.m. “Another Brother”
3:30 p.m. “Hearts and Minds”

Sunday, May 18
2:30 p.m. “Sir! No Sir!”
4:15 p.m. “Lighter Than Orange”

This event is free
*Please note that these films contain scenes that organizers warn may trigger post-traumatic stress in some individuals.