Agent Orange and the Anniversary of 9-11-2001

The front page story on the San Francisco Chronicle on September 11, 2001 was "War without end," reporting on the continuing deaths, health problems, and deformities caused by Agent Orange, sprayed on South Vietnam during what the Vietnamese call "The American War."  As I read, I asked myself, "How does our nation get away with this?"  Then the phone rang, and a friend told me about the attacks on the World Trade Center.  I was never among those believing that we had been attacked "because they hate our freedom." 

Almost a decade later, I took a travel-course to South East Asia, and the first newspaper I picked up in Vietnam, the ThanhMien, had a front page story with the heading "Agent Orange victim becomes a calendar girl."  The photograph of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl deformed from exposure to dioxin had won the UNICEF Photo of the Year Award.  The child  was the third generation in her family affected by the deadly  defoliant called Agent Orange because of the orange bands around the bins it came in. 

One of the books we were using for our tour was the Lonely Planet Guide, which described the use of Agent Orange as "ecocide." Going beyond the human and economic devastation brought by the USA during the American War, it was "the most intensive attempt to destroy a country's natural environment the world has ever seen."  Agent orange was sprayed on South Vietnam from American planes that sometimes had the words "Only YOU can prevent forests."  We went to the War Remnants Museum, which was once called  "The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government (meaning the puppet government of South Vietnam.)  It opened around 1975, when I was living in Algeria, where the headlines in El Moudjahid, proclaimed  la libération du Sud-Viêt Nam  rather than "The Fall of Saigon" as I suspected it was called in the American newspapers.   Actually, I'm wrong.  (Be sure to read Being Wrong:  Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schultz and The Invisible Gorilla, which are among many current best-selling books providing evidence that most of us are wrong about a lot of things!)  I just looked in an old binder of things from Algeria, and I see that in a newsletter I say the following:

I'm seeing current events from a different perspective.  At the end of April, Fafa met me at the door with the news that "Ca y est, the war is over and the Vietnamese have won."  My first thought was "I'll bet that's not how they're putting it on the cover of Time and Newsweek."  In the next couple of days, in La Republique and El Moudjahid, there were headlines unlikely to have appeared on the most widely-circulated American periodicals:  THE RESULT OF 30 YEARS OF HEROIC STRUGGLE:  A VICTORY FOR ALL THE WORLD'S PEOPLE; THE TRIUMPHANT REVOLUTION; HO CHI MINH:  FATHER OF THE COUNTRY; VIETNAMESE HEROES WHO LED THEIR PEOPLE TO VICTORY.

  (I'd better stop here and do a separate blog on the rest of this "perspective.")  I remember my students' celebrating the liberation of South Vietnam, too, which had special significance for me when one of those students from 1975 contacted me from Algeria while I was in Ho Chi Minh City in January 201.   I got a message from my nephew Karl saying that a former Algerian student of mine had contacted him through Facebook, where she was trying to regain contact with me.

Anyway, the name was changed around 1993 with the normalization of relations with the United States, and while we were at the War Remnants Museum, I saw victims of Agent Orange in the lobby by the door, taking donations for organizations that help the victims.  There was a book for us to write our countries of origin, and I noticed that there were people from Italy, Britain, Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, and several from Vietnam and Japan.  I was the only American (or Canadian) to sign on the page.  The others in my group didn't see them, and even now when I look online, I don't see any mention of the Agent Orange victims who were there.


A week after we got back from Vietnam, Parade Magazine had a column by Connie Schultz called "Good Morning, Vietnam," and that too was about Agent Orange, which I was making the focus of my project for the course.  By e-mail I contacted Connie Schultz, who never responded, but I also contacted Zeke Barlow, the author of "War without end," telling him what an impact his article had made on me, and he wrote back:

Wow, that was a nice -- and random -- email to get. Glad it had such an impact on you. Funny, I always wondered how many people read that piece because it ran on Sept. 11 and figured that most people were watching TV that day.

Sadly, I don't have a copy of it. I was in Vietnam when it ran, so I never got one. I actually lived in Virginia at the time that ran, I've never lived in SF, I just wrote for them.

Thanks again for the email, it made my day.

Cheers,

Zeke

Of course, his article is online in its entirety, but I went to the San Francisco Public Library to get a copy of the original front page story, and it's interesting to see what progress we've made--in some ways-- in a little under ten years.  To the right of "War without end" there's the headline "State Senate OKs milestone domestic partners bill/Supporters call it best in nation, critics say it undermines marriage."  There's a picture of Carol Migden, then an Assemblywoman.    This was also shortly after the dot.com bust, so another news report is "Loft opportunity/Bad economy is good news for buyers of live-work space.   There's also a Farley cartoon by Phil Frank, who didn't make it to the tenth anniversary of what we call 9-11.

I made a collage for my course and included part of Zeke Barlow's lead story on that September 11th day as well as the Thanhmien article on the little girl in the prize-winning photograph whose deformities cause her chest bones to press against her heart and lungs, making breathing difficult and painful. I included maps, bins with orange stripes, Lonely Planet quotes, and several of Connie Schultz' columns on Agent Orange.

I also looked up biological weapons and included in my collage the headline from October 2002, "Allies alarmed as US opposes biological weapons inspection."  The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction:  nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons.  Our nation is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat.   I put that fact in.

I also included a somewheat humorous exchange the students in my group had at the airport in Vietnam.  A cane was missing from a graphic at the Airport in Ho Chi Minh

Going through secrity, someone said she didn't mind at all how strict inspectors were.  "They can take my toothpaste and put me through the most intrusive of scanners.  If it makes us safe, I don't care."

But I don't think it makes us safe.  I don't think we'll ever be safe until we change our foreign policy to something other than "War without End."

The Tillman Story

When my sister visited (before falling down the stairs, hitting her head and winding up with an out-of-alignment spine, a pinched cerebral artery,  and a fractured C-2 vertebrae), I showed The Tillman Story to her, and that was one of the things she thanked me for in an e-mail exchange (we both hate the phone) two hours before her fall. 

My son watched it between his visits with friends while he was here in June.  He also thought it was really good, and when I told him how quickly it disappeared from theatres, he looked up the distribution.  In spite of getting excellent reviews and being about someone who was known all over the nation (as well as about the leaders of our nation!), it played in only 24 theatres!  Compare that with "The Hangover," which was playing in 3615 when my son visited.  I understand that documentaries are less popular than other movies, but "Fahrenheit 9-11" played on 868 screens at its peak, and even a less publicized documentary like "No End in Sight" played in 108 Theatres.  "Inside Job" played in 250 theatres.  So what happened with "The Tillman Story"!???

                Here are some other interesting comments:

            No one among the readers responding to Michael Ordona’s article on what the Academy overlooked for the Oscars this year (January 28, “Oscar Nominations Passed Over Some Worthy Work,”)  mentioned The Tillman Story, which Michael Ordona called “the biggest omission” (in the documentary category) and described as “perhaps the most enraging experience at the movies this year.”   It was the best movie I saw in any category last year, and it’s one I think is a must-see for those who care about this country and others in the world, so I truly don’t understand this omission.  Even though I enjoyed The Kids Are All Right and will be serving tea sandwiches on my grandmother’s best china in honor of The King’s Speech this Sunday evening, I am in mourning that this extremely important and engaging (as well as enraging) documentary has been over-looked.  The Tillman family had the courage to insist upon the truth;  how sad that the Academy and the public in general hasn’t heard and promoted it.

            T.M.

S.K.  February 22, 2011

Hi Tina,

I watched the Tillman story between my "flu-haze" Friday evening with my sister. We both were flabbergasted at the atrocities that high ranking officials get away with---i.e. the Army and specially ex-Bush. How does that man sleep at night? The highlight of the movie for me was Pat Tillman Sr. writing the letter and saying F---You at the end. I take strength from people who have the courage to speak their mind and not worry about the consequences. The family showed remarkable courage and perseverance, specially the Mom, and Pat's memory will live on correctly because of their efforts. The Congressional hearings at the end were a mockery of justice and when I see these hearings, I feel soooo helpless, almost as helpless as if I were living in Pakistan and not a democratic country. I am also very angry that the group who were responsible for the "friendly fire" weren't held accountable in any way at all. The movie teaches me to question authority and when instinct tells me something is not right, follow my instincts until I am satisfied with the answers. If nothing else, at least I have made my best effort. Thanks so much for sharing the story; I am very happy you're passing it on to as many people as possible!

S.K.

March 10, 2011

About "Tillman's Story" - watched it today.  I'm so glad that the movie was made because the family got SO little from all the "investigations."  The worst - or one of the worst - scenes was the generals yucking it up after the House hearing.  How nauseating.  His story felt like an allegory of the entire war story - total lies and duping from beginning to end.  I guess the only reason they didn't say that in the movie is that he did after all enlist to partake in the shenanigans.  What I found most curious is why he enlisted and my conclusion, the family is so coy about it, is that he wanted to go into politics.  What do you think, Tina?  His mother is incredible.  Her speech at the hearings is the best - something like, it's not about Pat, it's about what was done to the whole country (world?).  She and the kids are really wonderful.  Why did that husband divorce her and those fabulous kids?  I also was fascinated at how long they were under fire, long enough for Pat and the other two soldiers to have conversations.

It was just boom, bang, it seemed rather drawn out.  It should be required viewing in all Civics classes!

Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 8:23 AM

To: Tina Martin

Subject: Tillman Story

…I also wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about "The Tillman Story."  Sam's mom Rachelle just borrowed it yesterday and Gladys would also like to see it.  I figured you wouldn't mind and would like it if more people saw it, so I hope it's OK with you.

Now, as I'm writing (July 27, 2011), I’m still really concerned about the lack of viewings that The Tillman Story got.  Can you believe that it was shown in only 28 theatres, and The Hurt Locker (which I think is more difficult to watch in spite of also being a good film) has gotten more than 500?

                How do you explain that? 

http://www.the-numbers.com/

(http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Tillman-Story-The)

(http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2009/HURTL.php). 

I bought more than 5 copies of The Tillman Story and have lent it out to my friends, who’ve also passed it on.  But I can’t believe that the lack of theatre distribution happened “naturally,” due to viewer preference.  

Dana, the Queen of the Fallen Women

My gorgeous sister Dana stayed with me when she came to San Francisco to see our mother, and when she returned to Chicago, she sent me a really nice e-mail message thanking me and enumerating all the things I'd done to make her feel welcome.  This was very reassuring because I think of myself as a very bad hostess--the kind who closes the front door as soon as a guest leaves instead of walking the guest to the guest to their car.  I responded and we continued an e-mail conversation.  (Dana hates the telephone the way I do.  In fact, once she e-mailed me to say, "I'm about to call you.  DON'T PICK UP."  She and I don't mind message machines.)   She thanked me for helping make the visit fun and interesting and called me words like generous and thoughtful.   Just when I was wondering what she meant by that, she specified:  "You drove!!You laid out towels, made the best salad, introduced me to delicacies in cans i'd never seen (I'll have to include my recipe for Vietnamese Fruit Dessert on this blog), played your favorite documentary that i had not seen but had heard about (The Tillman Story, the best movie I saw in 2010 but one that was very quickly taken out of theatres) opened the door when we came too late."

Too late is like after 8:00 p.m.  

My sweet sister even thanked me for the sunflower seeds I gave her because I remember that she liked them when we were children.  

She gave me credit for talking while I drove, which for her and me is quite a stunt. 

But what she was especially grateful for was what I told her about our teaching our ESL students to interrupt.   She said she'd like to hear more about that, so I sent her a Deborah Tannen article called, "Don't just sit there.  Interrupt!"  (This should be a separate blog.)  She also said it was "inspiring" to see how I live in a world of 4am-8pm, but we kept our e-mail dialogue going so strong that it was already almost 11:00 when I went to bed feeling really good about my sister and me.  

Then, the following morning at 3:45 I got a call from her son Karl, who has lived in SF for the past few years, saying that she had fallen down the stairs at home and hit her head and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.  Her C-2 vertebrae was fractured, and her spine was out of alignment.  He also said something about the cerebral artery and the chance of a stroke.  I was in agony until he said, "But the good news is that she can move all extremities, and she has a normal brain scan."  A normal brain scan?  Has anyone in our family ever had a normal brain?  

I picked Karl up and drove him to the airport and felt like getting on the plane myself.  

I called Karl...on the telephone...and he kept me up to date.  Then, the night before she was to have surgery, I called her...on the telephone...and left a messages.  Then she called me back...and I picked up!  We talked for 30 minutes, and she told me that she'd started giving orders right away after being admitted to the hospital.  "I told them to go home and get me a cute outfit.  I told them I wanted to get my nails done."  


I told her how impressed I was that she was wearing a halo.  I'd already sent her my vision of her that way--a very live angel, mind you.  The idea of the hereafter had never occurred to me.  I thought of her HERE.  NOW.  I commented that while men were falling head over heels in love with her at first sight, she was just falling head over heels.  I hoped that haloes healed.  And I'd put her face and body under the halos I found online.  She wanted to disabuse me of my incorrect notion and had her boyfriend/man servant e-mail me pictures of her in her halo, which they called a crown.  She looked gorgeous and glamorous even with the device.  The pictures came in to my Outlook Box every two minutes for two days.  By then the operation was over, and it was a great success!  Karl took her home, and then he flew back to San Francisco to move out of his apartment and move everything to Vallejo, where he'll be going to med school at Touro University.  In fact, I'm due to pick him up now.  Maybe I'll be able to talk while I drive.  Wish me luck!

The Reading from the Peace Corps Journals in the Capitol Rotunda in 1988

Does anybody out there in the blogosphere know about the selections of Peace Corps journals that were read in the Capitol Rotunda in November of 1988, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s death and honor his greatest legacy?  About four hundred returned Peace Corps Volunteers read for two minutes each from their Peace Corps journals on November 21, 1988, and the following day the press, including USA Today, reported on the event in STATESLINE, “JFK Anniversary:  Peace Corps recruits remember Kennedy."   When my father asked about the event, I said, "Well, you know USA Today?"

  "Yes!"  he said.  "It's a piece of trash!"  

I said, "Well, I'm on their front page this morning," and he said, "Great!"  

Quick recovery, Daddy.

So, yes, I was one of the 400 returned Peace Corps Volunteers who lined up to read, and I also thought it was great that the USA Today chose to give the event some attention.  Also, what I heard while I was waiting impressed me.  Since then I’ve tried to get copies of the other entries.  So far, no one knows where they are or what happened to the video-tape that was made of the event.

If anyone has any information or any way of finding out whether they were preserved, I'd really like to know.  I also think these journal entries would be of great interest to those celebrating The Peace Corps’ fiftieth anniversary is in September.

For now, I'll post mine--both the one the editor really liked and the one that was approved.

Why blog?

My friend Linda, who took another friend and me to the beautiful spot at the beginning of the blog, suggested that I start a blog, and I do what Linda suggests--with the help of my favorite tutor (when my son's not around), Geary.  I'd like to share some photos and thoughts, but this is all very new to me.  Once I understand the steps, I may create different blogs because I have a lot to say on the subjects of Agent Orange and teaching, dealing with plagiarism, etc. in addition to travel impressions.   But for now, I want to say a few words about beautiful clouds, which my mother loves.  After leaving her at Aegis, I went to Germany and took pictures of every monument and every painting at the East Side Gallery in Berlin with her clouds in mind.  Here's a picture of the German Parliament with the East Berlin Radio Tower and what looks like a great big TV screen.  Can anyone identify that?