Friendship and the Sad Days of Summer Snow

“If you want to scare the vampires you simply drag them into the light.” Michael Franti.

Heading out of Vietnam I passed a beautiful tile mosaic wall dedicated to next years’ 1000 year anniversary of the founding of Hanoi. The city breathes with old and new. It’s perhaps this long continuum that adds to its strength and resilience. No where was this more evident in the efforts of the Friendship Village - a home for the vets and their offspring whose neurological systems and DNA flow with the chemical known as Agent Orange.

I was torn about going to the Village. I had seen the film produced by a Japan filmmaker that she dedicated to her husband - a Vietnam Vet who was caught up in the blanketing of miles of Vietnam with Agent Orange and had succumbed to Cancer. I was against the war and its crimes but felt I might not have any more juice or understanding, especially when it comes to the poisoning of children. I have filled up on both love and horrors these past few weeks. I began to think I might be feeling a little numb? Was there something to be gained by seeing the victims in order to understand the impact of war on people?

Meeting with Director of Village and head of the Victims of Agent Orange Association
The children, often with deformed faces, missing limbs etc - birth defects as a result of their parents exposure to the Toxin - remains the vestiges of a war that lives on in the bodies of its victims and is passed to the next generation. From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, allegedly in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin according to the World Health Organization is a carcinogen (causes cancer) and is identified by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects). Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest - approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam - were sprayed. The countless birth defects and injuries are staggering.

But how often we don’t want to face the sad history of our use of violence and our historical efforts from Wounded Knee to Korea and onto Vietnam, to wipe out mass groups of people through massacres, carpet bombing and chemical weapons (depleted uranium weapons in Iraq) in the name of peace and progress. But as we walked into the first classroom my apprehension slipped away and I knew why I was here. I quickly got down to the side of their table and began to talk with them, touch and play. I remembered what I had learned from Fred Donaldson’s Creative Play class. Don’t touch the heads and get down to their space. It was transformative and their smiles infectious. I was so grateful I came.

It is important to experience the casualties of war if only to put a human face on it. These children have been medically linked to Agent Orange decades later. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 - 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam. Dr. Jeanne Stellman, an agent orange expert, says that "this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters)."

The US courts threw out the Agent Orange case brought by some fellow Guild lawyers and friends Jeanne Mirer and Jonathan Moore on behalf of some victims of Agent Orange and their association. The court concluded that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. The Supreme Court refused to review it.

US veterans had successfully sued the chemical companies Dow and Monsanto (now bringing us GMO Food) who settled out of court for $180 million. Later the vets received $1.52 billion per year in benefits from Congress. Despite promises from Nixon of unconditional aid and clear liability, no assistance has been made for the children or the other victims in Vietnam. Will we ever truly heal until something is done and ackowledged?

The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. They also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. The report was suppressed, Agent Orange continued to be sprayed until after the report was leaked in 1969. Furthermore the Eco-damage wiped out significant forests, made species extinct and still contaminates parts of Vietnam. No US funds have been paid to clean up the mess.

In order to continue the struggle to Congress to get some funds for the victims and their families a Court of Conscience was called in Paris in May by our group IADL and the findings are astonishing and stark reminder that the breadth of destruction left by acts of war go far beyond the “target..” You can read the decision of the International Judges at our site at www.nlginternational.org. On my visit to this Friendship Village I learned that this fellow I met ( pictured below ) had had several children but they all died as infants (an all too common event for parents exposed to Agent Orange). He had been in the areas blanketed with Agent Orange during the war. The Village lets him come for rest and to work with him, as he has difficulty with mental functioning. 

Can we even imagine such a trauma to a family? Today I had my new grandson’s 1st birthday party.....Unimaginable.

I recall vividly in 1971 on the steps of the Capital, Peter Paul and Mary singing that deep refrain “when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?” It pains me that forty years later we still are duped into believing that war is an answer for anything. I think of the millions of Iraqi families scarred for life and for generations.

In the end it is the smiles, songs and faces of the children from Friendship Village that will stick with me forever.
We are creative beings with unlimited potential but we cannot be silent in the face of those who cling to the past ways of relating and solving problems. I hope all of you reading will find a small way to let your congressperson know that they should support a Victim Fund for Agent Orange victims in Vietnam and you can make a donate to Friendship House (www.friendshiphouse.org.) But also find something in your life that supports a move to peace in our world. On March 18, 2002, Vietnam Friendship Village Founder George Mizo died at his home in the village of Hofen, Germany. His wife Rosi and son Michael sent out a message of love for George: "Peace is giving something to life...Your spirit is living in our hearts and in the Vietnam Friendship Village. --With love, Rosi and Michael Mizo, Hildegard Hohn, and all the people you have touched with your life."

Eric Sirotkin
Ashland Oregon

PS - Thanks Marjorie Cohen, one of the Judges of the Court, from some of the stats above. Read her full article on Agent Orange on our site also at www.nlginternational.org

Vietnamese Veterans at the Ho Chi Minh complex

The Vietnam Lawyer Association has extremely graciously offered us a tour of Hanoi. (Those in tracks 3, 4 and 5 could take a tour today while 1, 2, and 6 worked on their recommendations for resolutions; tomorrow, we switch.) Our first stop was the Masoleum, with Ho Chi Minh beautifully preserved after 40 years. He looks like he is asleep, and will open his eyes and talk to you at any moment. Pictures cannot do justice to the size and grandeur of the building and the huge open lawn and plaze in front. The VLA had donated a funeral wreath on our behalf, which was laid at the door of the Masoleum with great ceremony by the guards in their funeral white uniforms. As we began to filter in, one guard raised his finger to his lips to indicate we should be respectfully quiet, a quizzical combination of white gloves and white uniform in the librarian's pose.

We came in through the VIP/foreigners' entrance; through a snafu with directions, some members of the tour and I had originally come to the People's entrance, the Vietnamese entrance. The line from there to the other entrance looked like it was at least a mile, with 10,000 crammed into the narrow walkway that wraps around the outer circumference of the complex. People come from all over Vietnam to see the complex. One of the staff members of the front desk of our hotel said he has seen it many, many times, too often to count.

After you come out of the Masoleum, the line snakes through the complex to view first the Presidential Palace, built by the French for their French-born governor (Ho Chi Minh felt is was too grand for a single, simple man) and then appropriated by the Vietnamese and the two buildings he lived in, one a two-room simple wooden structure, raised on stilts to provide single wide area, about the size of a small conference room, where the breeze could blow while he and his ministers met around a straight-forward table.

At that point, I spied them: a group of Vietnamese soldiers in the old green uniforms that I had seen so often from pictures of the war with the U.S., some of them with medals hanging from their front pockets. I became as curious and stared as much as all the Vietnamese stare at me (white faces are still vastly in the minority, despite the opening up of Vietnam and the encouragement of toursim). I was excited and so much wanted to talk to them: what state were they from? where had they fought? Did they get to met Ho? Did they ever hear him talk? How do they feel about the U.S. today? We are supporters of the U.S. group, Veterans for Peace, which helped to start the Vietnam Friendship Village, an organization that helps children and veterans affected by land mines and Agent Orange. We know several Americans who fought in the war. I ached to reach out to them, to offer a bridge of peace, or even a contact of peace. But it was too sudden, to come across them like this. I could not formulate the words to tell our translator why I was so excited, and my Vietnamese is non-existent. We stared at each other several times in the walk through the complex, sometimes only two or three feet away, but it might as well have been opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. I finally asked permission to take a photo. I wanted to have a picture with them, but even that part didn't come across. They shook their heads no. To have it come down to such a dumb tourist kind of gesture. I feel so sad. They are clearly all older, they must be in their 60s and 70s, who knows if we will have another chance. And who knows how they feel about being approached by this overweight middle-class American woman after all they had been through.

I will write again about the Congress. It is incredibly exciting to be here, the ideals and solidarity expressed are deeply felt and reach across all kinds of barriers of language and experience. That makes the contrast with the experience with the Vietnamese veterans all the more pointed in my heart. But this took me an hour, and I have to up early to get to the meeting point where the very organized VLA has suttle buses waiting for us to get us to the Congress site. Thank you, Eric, for setting this up, and giving us this opportunity to share.

Karen Weill

Seattle, Washington

Let the Games Begin

Lawyers and law students from all across the US gathered here in Hanoi today for a great veggie feast at the Tamarind restaurant (conveniently located right across from the Elegance Hotel). It was great seeing everyone excited about Vietnam and being here. We first met with a representative from the Vietnam Lawyers Association who brought us gift briefcases, our manual with the translated papers and a gift for everyone. The event starts tomorrow and we head early to the Convention Center. The President of Vietnam comes to address us tomorrow. We will try and tape it and get it up to watch. Banners hang around town welcoming the IADL.

Art and Sandy had just gotten back from a boat trip on Halong Bay. Beautiful caves and rock formations and some kayaking too. Marjorie was sharing with some students and others her first trip to China just after Mao died in 1977 with the Lawyers Guild. Several people had just arrived and more are still coming in. What was most exciting was to hear the wealth of experience as people went around and talked about their work and lives. Michael Sorgen shared his work in the 60's where they actually got a Federal Judge to declare the Vietnam War illegal and tracked his work forward through stop-Loss challenges and other cases. Law Students shared their experiences in finding the Guild and how inspiring it was to be here. Tiger Beer and Carrot Juice flowed freely. Watch for everyone's blog entries in the coming days.

Eric Sirotkin
Ashland, Oregon