Documentary shows deadly impact of Agent Orange

Trinh Bui

The theater in New York’s Greenwich Village was filled, both with an audience of 150 people and a searing indictment of the chemical catastrophe afflicting generations of Vietnamese because their country stood up to the United States and defeated it in 1975.

That indictment was the June 11 showing of “The Last Ghost of War” documentary. Shot in the United States, Vietnam and France, the film details the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

From 1962 to 1971, the United States sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants on the southern part of Vietnam as part of its effort to derail the struggle of the Vietnamese people.

Agent Orange was contaminated with dioxin, one of the most deadly industrial byproducts ever created. As actor and activist Vinie Burroughs put it in a talk before the movie showing, “This spraying let the big corporations and the fat cats grow fatter, while people died and suffered.”

Trinh Bui, a Vietnamese woman active in supporting the Vietnamese people’s lawsuit against the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange, and Sara Flounders of the International Action Center co-chaired the event.

After the film was shown, David Kline of Veterans for Peace, Constantin Kokkoris, an attorney for the lawsuit’s appeal, and the film’s producers Pham Quoc Thai and Janet Gardner led a panel discussion.

—Report and photo by G. Dunkel