Vietnam vets expect victory in Agent Orange battle

1.00pm

After a 20-year fight, Vietnam veterans are expecting to hear MPs admit on Wednesday that exposure to Agent Orange in the 1960s affected the health of soldiers and their children. JULIA MAHONY of NZPA traces their battle for vindication.

New Zealanders who served in the Vietnam War say they have known for years that sprays of Agent Orange were linked to spina bifida, cancer, blindness, skin disorders and birth defects in them and their children.

Over 20 years, successive governments and Health Ministry-reviewed reports have denied a connection between the defoliant and sick veterans, even claiming New Zealanders were never close enough to be exposed to Agent Orange sprayed from American planes.

On Wednesday, MPs will report the findings of a year-long parliamentary inquiry, which is widely expected to confirm the troops were exposed to Agent Orange and other chemicals, and that it harmed their health.

The inquiry was given new evidence which said soldiers did serve in an area defoliated by the United States, and were stationed close to where up to 350 spraying missions were probably carried out.

Previous inquiries into the health status of veterans and their children - including one by the Wellington School of Medicine - have been compared with new medical evidence, bolstered by veterans who told the inquiry their stories.

Veteran John Moller, of Kawerau, remembers watching a number of spraying incidences in Vietnam.

"The Government for many years put an emphasis on direct spraying of troops from the air, but the main vector of contamination was through dust," he told NZPA today.

"They might have sprayed a trail through the jungle 20 or 30 times, and a soldier would come out to collect food or ammunition and the landing helicopters would put up huge clouds of dust, and soldiers would breathe it in or swallow it, and it was also in the water supply."

When water was scarce, soldiers would go without showers for weeks on end, living in their spray-contaminated clothes, Mr Moller said.

Mr Moller is a former president of the Vietnam Veterans Association, set up in 1982 to research the effects of Agent Orange, and wound up last month. It differs from the Ex-Vietnam Services Association, set up as a social group.

"What the new research tells us is that dioxins (in Agent Orange) damage a person's DNA and chromosomes, then their immune system, which then promotes these other diseases, so veterans may get a certain type of cancer 20 or 30 years before they normally would," Mr Moller said.

"Veterans' lives could have been saved if their medical records had been 'tagged' as people to watch."

Veterans hope the parliamentary health select committee report will recommend free medical checks and that extra medical costs be paid for their health problems, on top of those already paid through the war disability pension.

But a crucial acknowledged link between Agent Orange and veterans' health could also open the way for compensation claims.

Mr Moller indicated to NZPA that individual veterans may have a case for punitive damages through the civil courts.

One veteran, John Jennings, 60, has already taken a case for compensation to the War Pensions Appeal Board.

His daughter Marakech, 30, is awaiting a heart-lung transplant, and has asthma, eczema, curvature of the spine.

Mr Jennings is blind in one eye and his grandson has a rare form of cyst on an eye.

"Politicians have to learn that they don't take servicemen for granted," he told the Herald on Sunday.

Many veterans just want an apology and the record set straight, after the previous reports which appeared to rubbish their claims of being close to Agent Orange showers.

They labelled an inquiry set up in 1999 by then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and headed by former governor-general Sir Paul Reeves -- which said health problems could not be linked to Agent Orange -- "grossly inaccurate".

Yet during the current inquiry, former army lieutenant Barry Dreyer told the committee that New Zealanders manually applied a strong defoliant -- most probably Agent Orange -- to vegetation around their positions, to get a clear view of any approaching Viet Cong.

National MP Judith Collins, who was instrumental in setting up the current inquiry, told NZPA today she still had issues over the role of the Health Ministry, as the peer reviewer of previous reports.

"And I have real questions about why defence forces didn't provide information on the use of Agent Orange where our troops were, until this inquiry, because they had the information in their records."

Ms Collins said Vietnam veterans were not treated well by the New Zealand public, the media and politicians on their return.

Select committee member Paul Hutchison told the Sunday Star-Times he believed veterans would be comfortable with the new inquiry's report.

"The committee has taken the new evidence very seriously and has brought in new medical advice that has brought a new perspective.

"That has undoubtedly added credibility to what the veterans have said."

Of about 3200 New Zealanders who served in Vietnam, about 2500 are thought to be still alive.

- NZPA