Vietnamese Agent Orange War Victims

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This image is showing victims of the Agent Orange chemical that was released the in American/Vietnamese war. These peoples parents were probably infected by the Agent Orange chemical and when they had children the infected genes passes on. These people have learned to deal with their situations despite the horrific effects to their bodies. I believe that War Victims are worth fighting for.

I recently went to Vietnam, and during that time I went to the Vietnamese/American War Museum, there were some terrible things I saw in there, and I also saw 'real' Agent Orange victims who worked there.

Agent Orange is the code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S military as a part of its herbicidal warfare program, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

There were nearly 4 million people affected by this deadly chemical.

During the Vietnamese War the American Government sprayed roughly 20,000,000 gallons (75,000,000 liters) in Vietnam, Eastern Laos and Cambodia. A goal for this was to destroy the countryside, so the people would have to flee to U.S dominated cities, and take refuge there.

Image displaying where the U.S Army sprayed the Agent Orange Chemical.

In October 1962, the U.S decided to target food crops, using Agent Blue. In the year 1962, 42% of the chemical spraying was to food crops. Because of this, farmers and peasants in the countryside took flight to U.S dominated cities, making the population almost triple in South Vietnam.

Agent Orange Stacks

Now in Vietnam, there are several 'Peace Villages' where they host between 50-100 victims, providing medical and physiological help. Here is a quote about one victim.

"May is 13, but she knows nothing, is unable to talk fluently, nor walk with ease due to for her bandy legs. Her father is dead and she has four elder brothers, all mentally retarded ... The students are all disabled, retarded and of different ages. Teaching them is a hard job. They are of the 3rd grade but many of them find it hard to do the reading. Only a few of them can. Their pronunciation is distorted due to their twisted lips and their memory is quite short. They easily forget what they've learned ... In the Village, it is quite hard to tell the kids' exact ages. Some in their twenties have a physical statures as small as the 7- or 8-years-old. They find it difficult to feed themselves, much less have mental ability or physical capacity for work. No one can hold back the tears when seeing the heads turning round unconsciously, the bandy arms managing to push the spoon of food into the mouths with awful difficulty ... Yet they still keep smiling, singing in their great innocence, at the presence of some visitors, craving for something beautiful."

This above quote makes me sad to know there are children my age or older, who don't have a basic knowledge they should be having, due to war effects. It is unjust for these children to have so many opportunities in life taken away from them. These children can never play the piano, or ride a horse, and many other things have just plainly been stripped from them.

There are a few more fortunate victims, who have managed to make a career besides there defects. Although I was unable to find him online, there was a carpenter in the museum who could make beautiful wood carvings, and was more successful than other carpenters in his city. Here's the catch, he only had legs. To be a carpenter you would think a necessity is to have arms, but this man could do everything and better, using only his legs.

I know we can't save these people from there diseases, but we could make the world more aware of what has happened to them, and make sure these types of things never happen again. As Ben once said in the Chaos Walking Trilogy,

"War Makes Monsters of Men."