3 janvier, 2007 14:51
Ghosts of Christmas Past: The Christmas Bombing of Vietnam- agent orange Dow
A lawsuit on behalf of some 100 Vietnamese victims, naming 37 firms, with Dow Chemical and Monsanto the most prominent among them, was brought before the ...
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Dioxin-loaded chemicals
But has it made amends? A remarkable film, shown earlier this month at the Center for the Study of World Civilizations at Tokyo Institute of Technology, goes a long way to addressing and answering this question.
"Agent Orange -- a personal requiem" is a 70-minute documentary by Sakata Masako. In this film (in English, Japanese and Vietnamese, with either English or Japanese subtitles), Sakata delves deeply into the effects of the use of the herbicide known as Agent Orange. That dioxin-loaded chemical was, for 10 years beginning in 1961, rained on Vietnam, primarily to rob Vietcong soldiers of hiding places in the country's extensive forests.
The "personal requiem" element of Sakata's film about this tragedy inflicted on a massive scale by one country on another, comes about because she suffered a singular tragedy very close to home.
Greg Davis, a famous American photojournalist who died on May 4, 2003, age 54, was her husband, and their home was in Japan. Davis, whose brilliant work was featured in leading magazines and newspapers all around the world, contracted liver cancer that was, Sakata is convinced, caused by his exposure to Agent Orange while serving with U.S. forces in Vietnam.
Sakata, having lost her life partner, whom she met when they were both living in Kyoto in 1970, decided to honor Greg's life with a film on a subject that both of them were passionate about: the millions of Vietnamese who suffered and continue to suffer from the aftereffects of America's chemical weapons assault on their country.
Agent Orange, so called because of the orange stripe on the drums in which it was stored, was a powerful herbicide and defoliant. More than 72 million liters of Agent Orange were sprayed over Vietnam. The cruel thing about this highly toxic chemical is that its effects reach forward across the generations. Vietnamese children born with birth defects now are the grandchildren of men and women who were victims of the spraying in the 1960s.
Footage of the spraying of Agent Orange appears in Sakata's film. The voice of a U.S.-government spokesman at the time informs us that there is "no harm" to human beings in this, and that the agricultural land becomes safe and fertile again in one year's time.
In fact, the effects of dioxin on animal and plant life are enormous, as the tens of thousands of Vietnamese children with congenital disabilities prove. In areas of the country not sprayed with Agent Orange, rates of deformity are as low as one-twentieth of those in regions that were sprayed.
In recent years, soldiers who served in Vietnam from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea have been awarded compensation through the courts from companies that were involved in the manufacture of Agent Orange. In the U.S. alone, about 10,000 veterans have received medical disability benefits. And yet, not a single Vietnamese has been able to extract a penny from either the governments involved in the war crime or the firms responsible for the manufacture of the chemical. (Firms in Canada, New Zealand and Australia were also active in its manufacture.)
Lawsuit dismissed
A lawsuit on behalf of some 100 Vietnamese victims, naming 37 firms, with Dow Chemical and Monsanto the most prominent among them, was brought before the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Federal Court in 2005. On March 10 that year, the judge, Jack Weinstein, dismissed the lawsuit, stating that there was no legal basis for the claims and that the use of Agent Orange did not constitute chemical warfare.
If it was not chemical warfare, then what, indeed, was it?
In a world where the poisoning by dioxin of a Ukrainian politician, Viktor Yushchenko, and the murder by radioactive Polonium-210 of Russian emigre, Alexander Litvinenko, garners monumental coverage in the media, surely the fate of what the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange estimates to be more than 4 million sufferers of the effects of Agent Orange rates our attention, our contrition and our amendable action.
Sakata's moving film brought back to me memories of the Vietnam War, the war of my generation, with great poignancy and power. It reminded me that Christmas can have myriad associations, some of them, as in the case of the Christmas bombing of 1972, sickening and immoral. Although that area-bombing campaign was unrelated to the use of Agent Orange, it is nonetheless a symbol of a last-ditch effort on the part of the U.S. to extricate itself from a catastrophe of its own making.
There's the parallel to Iraq; and a Christmas message to the U.S. and its allies: The havoc you have wreaked will take generations to ameliorate, and you will only be able to purge your guilt if you come to terms with its consequences.
I'd like to think that this is a message of light and hope. But judging by the way the U.S. has treated its Vietnamese victims, the real meaning of Christmas -- forgiveness, penitence and honorable reparation -- will, I fear, be lost in darkness and hopelessness for millions of people for many years to come.
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We have, US military suffering the devesting effects from, Dow Chemical's Agent Orange toxic poisoning they sprayed on our soldiers Too. Many have died without being compensated a dime from cancer an other diseases just like breast implant victims Dow Chemical is liable for toxically poisoning with breast implants, asbestos, pesticides, mustard gas etc., Dow Chemical, used all of, us as guinea pigs without our informed consent to try out there latest toxic inventions & highly toxic chemicals On humans as test subjects.. Which is against the law! Dow, needs held Liable for the egregious crimes they've committed against all humans NOW!
Roger Pulvers is an American-born Australian author, novelist, playwright, theater director, and professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His thirty books published in Japanese and English include a newly completed collection of 12 stories from the bible updated for this century, The Honey and the Fires (ABC Books, Australia). This is a lightly edited version of an article that appeared in The Japan Times on December 24, 2006. The film was screened at the Havana Film Festival on December 15, 2006.
