RELATED ARTICLEEven when you aren’t sick, you’re afraid. Afraid you’re going to get sick, or that your children will be born sick. You live with this fear all the time.
—Al Marcotte, Vietnam veteran
“Steps Learned Along the Way: Redefining Photojournalism’s Power”
– Wendy WatrissThousands of men, their wives, and children still live with this same fear in the United States, in Australia, in South Korea, and in Southeast Asia. It’s the fear of having children born with birth defects, fear of developing cancer, partial paralysis, symptoms of premature aging, severe skin rashes, impaired circulation of blood and oxygen, and deterioration of the immune and neurological systems. (Story continues below.)
Dan Jordan, 36, and his son Chad after a speech about Agent Orange outside the State Capitol in Austin, Texas on Vietnam Veterans Day in 1981. Dan Jordan has digestive and liver problems, respiratory and blood disorders. He was with the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. “We were eating, drinking, breathing and sleeping in Agent Orange,” Jordan said. “The leaves were dripping with it.” He is the cofounder of the Brotherhood of Vietnam Veterans.
Mike Milne, 36, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1981. Milne was in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969 with a search and destroy unit attached to the 36th Engineers. He remembers being in areas that were sprayed with defoliants from helicopters. In 1976, his legs and hands began to go numb. By 1981, he had to do daily physical therapy at home or at the Veterans Administration Hospital to keep his muscles and nerves working. The neck brace and traction unit have been used to stretch the back and neck bones to try to slow down the degeneration.
Michael Jordan, 8, left, and Chad Jordan, 10, sons of Dan Jordan, a Vietnam War veteran, Austin, Texas, 1981. Chad and Jordan were each born with club hands, missing fingers, and missing bones in their wrists. There was no prior history of birth defects in either parent’s family.
In 1981, Jim Roxby, above, and fellow Vietnam War veteran Mike Milne helped form an organization, Veterans of the Vietnam War, to assist Vietnam veterans. Roxby had one child, a son who was born with stomach and intestinal defects. After nearly a year in the hospital, these defects were corrected.
Jim Roxby, above in 1981, was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967 in a specialized unit with the U.S. Army First Cavalry Division. A resident of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he sprayed Agent Orange to help clear land for three base camps. In the mid-1970’s, big sores broke open on his hands and he couldn’t keep food down. His skin started to flake off and numbness crept up his arms, legs, back and chest. He received no compensation from the federal Veterans Administration or disability payments from Social Security. He died in the late 1980’s.
Frank Mendieta, with a photograph of his son Franky, outside the Federal Courthouse at the Agent Orange court hearings in Houston, Texas in 1983. Six-year-old Franky was born with club feet. He had four surgeries and would need leg braces. He was also subject to convulsions and fevers of unknown origin. Frank, who served with a tank unit in the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, has recurrent stomach pains, headaches and fevers of unknown origin.
John Woods and his son, Jeff, 7, Long Island, New York, 1981. John Woods, 39, was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967 when Agent Orange was being sprayed all over. He has had health problems since his return, including, he says, recurrent nausea, stomach pains, headaches, rashes and numbness in his hands. His two oldest children, born before Vietnam, are all right; the two youngest boys, including Jeff, born after Vietnam, have constant health problems. “I should have died on the battlefield. The dead man’s problems are over; I’m looking at death every day,” says John Woods.
Veterans of the Vietnam War, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 1981 Veterans of the Vietnam War is a Pennsylvania self-help veterans group supportive of Agent Orange-exposed veterans.
Vietnam War veterans Michael Milne, left, and Douglas Rudolph, both of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 1981. Milne and Douglas Rudolph are members of Veterans of the Vietnam War. They recall being sprayed directly with Agent Orange. Rudolph’s Navy job was to purify contaminated water in rice paddies and rivers near the Demilitarized Zone. Both men are suffering from a deterioration of bones and muscles. Neither man receives disability pay from the Veterans Administration.
Daniel Salmon, Vietnam War veteran, San Antonio, Texas, 1981 What remained of Daniel Salmon’s once robust health was a portrait from his early Air Force days. He is 44 in 1981 and could not work.
Daniel Salmon, Vietnam War veteran, San Antonio, Texas, 1981. Formerly a career Air Force electrician, Salmon had no health problems until after a tour of duty in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 during which he had significant exposure to the spraying of Agent Orange. In the mid-1980’s, both of his legs were amputated because of circulation problems and the onset of diabetes. He died in the late 1980’s.
For another photojournalist’s contemporary project on Agent Orange, see “A Personal Project: Third-Generation Victims of Agent Orange” by Justin Mott »
For many Vietnam War veterans and their families in the U.S. and elsewhere, this fear is a reality.
As a photojournalist, I became involved with veterans and their battle to find answers about Agent Orange. When I saw that getting my pictures about their situation published in prestigious magazines was not enough to make a difference in their lives, I took the photographs into the political arena. With veterans’ groups, we used the visual images as testimony before state and federal officials to finally get action.
Although the cause of these symptoms may never be totally defined, the nature of the veterans’ illnesses and the way they develop are closely related to the well-documented effects of toxic chemical poisoning. Factory workers, agricultural laborers, and civilians exposed to dioxin have experienced similar problems. Dioxin was a byproduct present in the tons of chemical defoliants, such as Agent Orange, used by the U.S. military in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s. But no special precautions were taken to protect U.S. infantrymen who came in contact with the chemical.
For U.S. veterans who began to voice their fears in the late 1970’s, it has been a lonely and tragic struggle. For years, government agencies, many scientists, doctors and politicians dismissed their claims. The burden of proof was placed on them and their families. The 1984 $180 million class action U.S. court settlement with the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange gave the appearance of justice. In reality, it served to hide real evidence of responsibility and protect the U.S. government and U.S. military from further liability. The division of money from the settlement has barely covered the medical care and research needed for the thousands of veterans and their families who were part of the lawsuit.
Today many of the Vietnam veterans still endure health and psychological problems related to the chemicals used by the U.S. in Vietnam. Many are organizing again—engaging with a new generation of U.S. veterans to fight for the long-term medical and psychological care that they need for health problems related to the first Gulf War in the early 1990’s and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.