Wounded US combat vet joins Viet Cong fighter on Agent Orange panel

Wounded US combat vet joins Viet Cong fighter on Agent Orange panel


Veterans For Peace Chapter 31 member Frank Corcoran, who was shot in the stomach as a 19-year-old Marine, spoke of his experiences on a panel devoted to Agent Orange issues in Pittsburgh Tuesday, October 14th with Mrs. Dang Hong Nhut, a Viet Cong fighter who had been his bitter enemy 40 years earlier.


Mrs Dang fought in the Cu Chi area of Viet Nam between 1961 and 1966; and from 1966 to 1972 she was imprisoned by the US-sponsored government of South Viet Nam in what is known as "tiger cages." Her husband, aslo a VC fighter, died of Agent Orange related cancer in 1999. Mrs Dang birthed a healthy child before the war in 1960, then in the following years suffered three miscarriages and a stillborn child. She had surgery to remove an intestinal tumor, then later had surgery to remove a tumor from her thyroid. She is now fighting cancer. Corcoran survived prostate cancer, which the VA automatically connects to Agent Orange in soldiers who fought in certain areas of Viet Nam.


Corcoran and Mrs. Dang were joined on the panel with Tran Thi Hoan, a 21-year-old woman born with no legs and a missing left hand due to Agent Orange poisoning of her parents; Dinh Thi Minh Huyen, the group's translator; and Merle Ratner, co-coordinator of Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, which sponsored the 10-city American tour. The Pittsburgh panel at La Roche College was organized by VFP Pittsburgh area member Sandy Kelson.


The purpose of the tour is to call attention to Agent Orange, which still lingers in the ecosystem of Viet Nam and plagues the Vietnamese people. Agent Orange remains a serious public health issue in Viet Nam. There are many Agent Orange "hot spots" in Viet Nam that desperately need to be cleaned up, something that requires significant funds. Veterans For Peace leads the fight to remind citizens of the United States that, as an affluent nation, we had no problem hosing out vast sums of money to kill people and defoliate the countryside of a small nation like Viet Nam and that we cannot morally avoid the call to spend the money needed to restore the land and the people to health as best as our science and technology can accomplish that. To do less is to compound the moral disaster that was the Vietnam War.


John Grant

http://www.vn-agentorange.org/index.html

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