Five years later, a decision is reached on how the $189 million, ballooned $9 million by interest, will be distributed. The payment plan merely confirms all of the fears and bitterness expressed at the fairness hearings. A totally disabled Vietnam veteran will receive $12,000, but this will be spread out over a period of ten years, and even these meager payments could render the recipients ineligible for supplements like food stamps, public assistance, and government pensions. Widows of Vietnam veterans who can prove their husbands died from Agent Orange exposure will receive $3,700, but the children of Vietnam veterans are entirely excluded.
Meanwhile, the financiers who subsidized the plaintiffs’ attorneys receive, as a group, $750,000. An attorney who’d been a “passive investor” will receive $1,700 an hour for his services. One law firm collects over $1.3 million while another receives more than $1.8 million. The court awards a total of more than $13 million in attorneys’ fees.3
The Vietnam War was not the first time that young men were sent off to kill and die for what their government and their fellow citizens considered a noble cause. Nor was it the first time that young men who’d been sent to war by flag-waving crowds returned home to find that they were expected to keep quiet about the horrors they had seen, were expected to marry, find a job, start a family, and get on with their lives. Men and women who have experienced combat would like to do these things, but they carry scars, memories, and terrors, that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Vietnam veterans did not want to believe that their government would expose them to chemicals that, years later, would devastate their immune systems, making them susceptible to a host of diseases like kidney failure, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, brain tumors, and various kinds of cancer. They did not want to believe that corporations that profited from manufacturing and selling deadly chemicals would choose to deny their products’ toxicity, and that these corporations would refuse to offer to help veterans of what, at the time, was our nation’s longest, second most expensive, and most divisive conflict since the Civil War.
Twenty years after the original class action lawsuit is settled out of court, Vietnamese victims of chemical warfare file their own lawsuit, charging the chemical companies with war crimes. By this time, thousands of US veterans have succumbed to the effects of Agent Orange, leaving widows and children to grieve and wonder why the nation chose to ignore the pleas of their loved ones. Lawyers for the Vietnamese plaintiffs believe—with good reason—that they can call on two decades of research to convince a court to rule on behalf of Vietnamese victims of the decade-long defoliation campaign in Southeast Asia. They travel to Vietnam to see at first hand the legacies of chemical warfare in that nation. They study voluminous reports from around the world on the effects of dioxin on animals and human beings, and they consult with Vietnamese doctors and scientists who have devoted their lives to the study of dioxin and to helping victims of Agent Orange. Perhaps most importantly, they visit “peace villages” where they meet children with missing legs and arms, with huge heads, and with scaly burned-bark skin. They build what they believe to be an irrefutable case that will prove, once and for all, that human beings who are exposed to dioxin get sick and die.
The out of court settlement on May 7, 1984, seemed to have ended all hope of securing justice for victims of chemical warfare. But on January 30, 2004, lawyers for the Vietnamese will appear in a Brooklyn federal courtroom to argue their case. The presiding judge will be Jack Weinstein.
CHAPTER 5
A Lucky Man
DANANG, VIETNAM
Nguyen Dinh An has lived through attacks that smashed giant trees into splinters and turned living things to smoking dust. The aircraft that rained bombs upon his unit flew so high that no one could hear them coming. He heard the cries of wounded soldiers, and he watched men die. Low flying planes flew over almost daily, spewing chemicals that killed trees and animals, poisoned the soldiers’ food, and made them terribly ill. It was difficult to find safe haven from the bombing raids and impossible to escape the effects of chemical warfare.
For a time during the American War, Mr. An ran a Vietcong propaganda program from the basement of a Marine officers’ barracks without being discovered.
Now, Mr. An is Chairman of the Fatherland Front, an organization that is responsible for coordinating charities, NGOs, and other types of organizations in Danang. He is also Chairman of the Danang Union of Friendship Organization.
We thank Chairman An and his staff for meeting with us, and we try our best to display the proper etiquette for this occasion. In Vietnam, you are expected to arrive on time for meetings, properly dressed, and fully prepared not to waste your own or anyone else’s time. The Vietnamese workday starts around six a.m. and it ends twelve hours later, with a two-hour midday informal break during which the hustle and bustle of larger towns and cities slows down. Once, I entered a bank during the break to use an ATM. There were no tellers, and the security guard was sleeping on a bench. I felt almost guilty. Another day, forgetting that it was midday break, I walked into a Vietnamese airline (Dragon Air) office, only to find it deserted, except for a woman sleeping on the floor behind the counter. Startled, she was not at all happy to see a sweat-drenched customer.
Our interpreter signals that it is time to start the interview, but my recorder squeaks, stalls, and unravels. A new tape, and Mr. An begins by recalling living in the mountains when planes flew over, dousing the trees with defoliants.
“When the Agent Orange fell,” he says, “we took a towel, got it wet and covered our nose, and after that, we went to the waterfall to take a bath. You know cassava? It is like a potato, and it was our major food, but we were told that cassava was very sensitive to Agent Orange, so that’s why we tried to chop up all of the cassava we’d planted before.
“So we protected ourselves by taking a bath, and then we chopped all of the cassava. Traditionally, we used green beans, because we believed that green beans would clean up all of the poison from the chemicals. So that’s why we cooked green beans with sugar.
“After that we tried to cook all of the cassava, but when it was cooked it had a different color, it turned yellow and tasted different than it had before. But we had to eat that. We knew that the cassava was poisoned, but it was our major source of food and we had no choice but to eat it.
“I don’t know how the chemical went into our bodies, but several friends of mine at that time, when we were stationed in the same place, had cancer at a very early age, and they died. The most popular [common] one was liver cancer.
“So I always presume that I am a lucky person. I don’t know when my good fortune will be over. I got married after the war ended, and I was very happy with my very first child. She was a normal kid, so I was very happy. Many friends of mine got married after the war ended, they had children, and many of those children had birth defects. So, I had only one child, and didn’t want to have a second one because I didn’t want to take the chance. We didn’t know what it would be like.