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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
October 13, 2007
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| September 28, 2007 |
Thirty Years On: The Lingering Effects of the Viet Nam War and Agent Orange – My Doan Takasaki |
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| My Doan relays her harrowing experience of the Viet Nam-US War. |
It’s no accident that My Doan Takasaki has pursued a career that combines studying the biological and social effects of the deadly chemical herbicide Agent Orange with peace building and conflict prevention. A petite, doll-like woman resplendent in a traditional Vietnamese ao zai (silk dress), My Doan gave several captivating and emotional lectures to Peace Boat participants on the first leg of the voyage from Yokohama, Japan to Da Nang, Viet Nam. Born in 1957 near Saigon, Viet Nam she was exposed to the horrors of war at a very young age and not only witnessed that country fall into disarray during the Viet Nam–US War but also experienced firsthand the personal destruction of war when her two teenage brothers were killed fighting for The National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam. To illustrate her experience, she showed a harrowing grainy black and white photograph of a US army tank dragging behind it a Viet Cong (VC) soldier. ‘Every week this image passed by the front of my house,’ she whispered. |
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| Participants who helped to prepare My Doan’s lectures. |
Peace Boat participants listened sympathetically as My Doan courageously told her story. She and her twin sister were separated from their parents during most of the war, but after being reunited with them in 1975, they learnt of their father’s torture by electrocution by the Saigon government. The family was also plunged into poverty when they lost their land and livelihood under Communist policy. ‘My body wasn’t hurt but my mind and my heart were injured,’ she said.
Today, she is a researcher and advocate at the International Peace Research Institute at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo where she works passionately for peace and conflict prevention. She also advocates on behalf of victims of the Viet Nam War and educates the public about the devastating and lingering effects of Agent Orange that was used by US Forces during the war in Viet Nam. Thirty years after the end of the war, nearly 5 million Vietnamese suffer from the effects of this chemical, with an estimated 2 million people needing daily care. Exposure to Agent Orange has been linked to various illnesses and conditions, including severe physical disabilities, mental retardation, audiovisual impairments, cancer, skin and liver disease, and birth defects. |
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A light-hearted moment as My Doan tells the story of how she met her husband at an event focused on the devastating effects of Agent Orange. |
Between 1961 and 1979 the US military sprayed 94.5 million liters of Agent Orange over jungles and farms in Viet Nam and Laos in order to kill plant life to reveal enemy hiding places and destroy food crops. While it destroyed the natural environment, it also later proved to be severely harmful to humans and animals due to powerful dioxins. Over 3000 villages have felt the effects of Agent Orange spraying, and more than 16 million Vietnamese people live in dioxin-infected regions today. |
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| My Doan works with her helpers to make signs in Vietnamese for a lecture on Vietnamese culture and tradition. |
According to My Doan, the current Vietnamese government has taken little responsibility for the consequences of Agent Orange beyond giving a very small allowance as compensation, even though it was the American-elected president of South Viet Nam, Ngo Dinh Diem, who pushed the US to manufacture and import the herbicide during the war. In contemporary Viet Nam, the effects of Agent Orange are kept out of school text books and little information exits about the catastrophe. Steps have been taken, however, to offer compensation on the side of the US government after President Clinton admitted their mistake in 1996 and paid compensation of four hundred thousand US dollars to the Vietnamese government. From 1991, the Vietnamese government has also received fifty-five million US dollars from the American people that has been put towards treating the victims.
Peace Boat, in collaboration with the Da Nang Youth Union in Viet Nam, is committed to fundraising and building a rehabilitation centre for victims of Agent Orange. This center will use proven medical treatments to detoxify the victims through the use of sauna, exercise, vitamins and unsaturated oils. With rehabilitation, most children can live normal lives. It is a small yet hopeful step towards helping Viet Nam to heal its ongoing wounds from one of the most destructive wars in history and will ensure the victims won’t be forgotten. |
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