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The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam
The moving story of how a small group of people—including two Vietnam veterans—forced the U.S. government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrors—agent orange and unexploded munitions—inflicted on the Vietnamese.
"Fifty years after the last U.S. service member left Vietnam, the scars of that war remain...This [is the] remarkable story of a group of individuals determined to heal those enduring wounds.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act and 2034
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
The Long Reckoning is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the day the last American combat soldier left Vietnam.
"Fifty years after the last U.S. service member left Vietnam, the scars of that war remain...This [is the] remarkable story of a group of individuals determined to heal those enduring wounds.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act and 2034
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos. That small region saw the most intense aerial bombing campaign in history, the massive use of toxic chemicals, and the heaviest casualties on both sides.
In The Long Reckoning, George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.
The Long Reckoning is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the day the last American combat soldier left Vietnam.
496 pages, Hardcover
Published March 28, 2023
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December 1, 2025
This is not a history of the Vietnam War (or the American War) as seen from the machinations at the highest levels; although McNamara realized it was lost, and Kissinger believed it unwinnable when he was still a professor. It is not a military history, in the strictest sense; though we hear Westmoreland's body counts (South Vietnamese casualties didn't count) and wade into specific battles. It even ends abruptly in 1968, when the two vets (an analyst and a grunt) we loosely follow end their tours. It's about, instead, the things they carried, about coming home, and returning. It's about a land and a people, dealing with the long reckoning of war. It's about hubris, racism, poison, cancer, birth defects. Fifty years later and the clean-up has just begun.
-- Dioxin, the toxic chemical in Agent Orange is one of the dozen "forever chemicals." The half-life of dioxin in surface soil was known to be between nine and fifteen years. Buried deeper in the subsoil, it might be anything from twenty to one hundred years. In pond, lake, and river sediment, it was about one hundred. In the human body, it was estimated at eleven to fifteen years.
-- The only way dioxin can be excreted from the human body is through breast milk. The author calls this an important if chilling insight. First children suffered a proportionately higher number of deformities because of the higher percentage of dioxin in the milk.
-- American pilots were told the defoliants were non-toxic. Some pilots tossed back a shot glass of Agent Orange as an initiation ritual . . . When storage barrels were empty, soldiers often perforated them and turned them into showers, or cut them in half to make improvised barbecue pits.
-- The first vets to suggest their unusual health problems might be related to Agent Orange tended to end up in VA psych wards.
-- The American public, as is its way, rallied around the POW/MIA flags, even though the belief that American soldiers were being kept in Vietnamese prisons long after the war's end turned out to be a canard. The author calls this the Rambo effect. It was enough of a craze to get Ross Perot 19 per cent of the vote and unintentionally lead Bill Clinton to the White House.
-- What angered him most was Westmoreland's announcement on the radio that the Viet Cong had seized control of the Quang Ngai hospital, using civilians as human shields. It had never happened: the hospital was untouched. Of course, Westmoreland also lied, denying the bombing raids into Laos, which he personally authorized.
-- Napalm, a mixture of gasoline or diesel fuel and a jelling agent that made it stick to human flesh, glowing an eerie green as it ate its way through to the bone, was cooked up in a secret laboratory at Harvard by a chemist who was otherwise well-regarded for his work in blood-clotting agents and antimalarial medications. Cluster munitions were first outlined in a principle by Leonardo da Vinci.
-- The timing of crop destruction missions was pegged to the agricultural cycle, targeting the harvest of corn and sweet potatoes in May and June, for example, or the planting of sticky rice in July.
-- Jimi Hendrix was a former paratrooper in the 101st Airborne.*
-- Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. aircraft flew 580,344 sorties over Laos, which averaged out to one every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for nine years.
-- A sampling of deformities: a paralyzed baby girl, a four-year-old with a clubfoot, a three-year-old and a seven-year-old with too many fingers or toes, a teenager born without eyes. Cleft palate, arthrogryposis, hydrocephalus. And limbs still being lost from unexploded ordnance.
-- Google the artist Le Minh Chau.
-- I am a member at one of those warehouse stores where you can get things in bulk at a discount. A few times I've gotten bags of frozen swai, individually wrapped white fish filets. Nicely-priced, convenient, and very tasty. That swai are Vietnamese catfish that feed on river sediment hit me while I was reading about the levels of dioxin in Vietnamese freshwater fish.
____________
*I didn't know this and felt compelled to chase the story down. Hendrix had been charged with a bunch of crimes in Seattle as a youth and was given a choice of jail or the army. He chose the latter and was indeed assigned to the paratrooper division. He was not a good soldier. According to one version I read, Hendrix told an army psychiatrist that he might be a homosexual. Long story short: he was given a general discharge with honorable conditions.
-- Dioxin, the toxic chemical in Agent Orange is one of the dozen "forever chemicals." The half-life of dioxin in surface soil was known to be between nine and fifteen years. Buried deeper in the subsoil, it might be anything from twenty to one hundred years. In pond, lake, and river sediment, it was about one hundred. In the human body, it was estimated at eleven to fifteen years.
-- The only way dioxin can be excreted from the human body is through breast milk. The author calls this an important if chilling insight. First children suffered a proportionately higher number of deformities because of the higher percentage of dioxin in the milk.
-- American pilots were told the defoliants were non-toxic. Some pilots tossed back a shot glass of Agent Orange as an initiation ritual . . . When storage barrels were empty, soldiers often perforated them and turned them into showers, or cut them in half to make improvised barbecue pits.
-- The first vets to suggest their unusual health problems might be related to Agent Orange tended to end up in VA psych wards.
-- The American public, as is its way, rallied around the POW/MIA flags, even though the belief that American soldiers were being kept in Vietnamese prisons long after the war's end turned out to be a canard. The author calls this the Rambo effect. It was enough of a craze to get Ross Perot 19 per cent of the vote and unintentionally lead Bill Clinton to the White House.
-- What angered him most was Westmoreland's announcement on the radio that the Viet Cong had seized control of the Quang Ngai hospital, using civilians as human shields. It had never happened: the hospital was untouched. Of course, Westmoreland also lied, denying the bombing raids into Laos, which he personally authorized.
-- Napalm, a mixture of gasoline or diesel fuel and a jelling agent that made it stick to human flesh, glowing an eerie green as it ate its way through to the bone, was cooked up in a secret laboratory at Harvard by a chemist who was otherwise well-regarded for his work in blood-clotting agents and antimalarial medications. Cluster munitions were first outlined in a principle by Leonardo da Vinci.
-- The timing of crop destruction missions was pegged to the agricultural cycle, targeting the harvest of corn and sweet potatoes in May and June, for example, or the planting of sticky rice in July.
-- Jimi Hendrix was a former paratrooper in the 101st Airborne.*
-- Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. aircraft flew 580,344 sorties over Laos, which averaged out to one every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for nine years.
-- A sampling of deformities: a paralyzed baby girl, a four-year-old with a clubfoot, a three-year-old and a seven-year-old with too many fingers or toes, a teenager born without eyes. Cleft palate, arthrogryposis, hydrocephalus. And limbs still being lost from unexploded ordnance.
-- Google the artist Le Minh Chau.
-- I am a member at one of those warehouse stores where you can get things in bulk at a discount. A few times I've gotten bags of frozen swai, individually wrapped white fish filets. Nicely-priced, convenient, and very tasty. That swai are Vietnamese catfish that feed on river sediment hit me while I was reading about the levels of dioxin in Vietnamese freshwater fish.
____________
*I didn't know this and felt compelled to chase the story down. Hendrix had been charged with a bunch of crimes in Seattle as a youth and was given a choice of jail or the army. He chose the latter and was indeed assigned to the paratrooper division. He was not a good soldier. According to one version I read, Hendrix told an army psychiatrist that he might be a homosexual. Long story short: he was given a general discharge with honorable conditions.
April 9, 2023
The mental and physical wounds that emanate from the Vietnam War run very deep for the American and Vietnamese generation that fought. Today, countless veterans who were sent to Southeast Asia still suffer from their experiences. “Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia, usually from helicopters or low-flying aircraft, but sometimes from backpacks, boats, and trucks. Agent Orange alone accounted for more than half of the total volume of herbicides deployed. One of its key ingredients, dioxin, is highly toxic even in tiny quantities. Operation Ranch Hand deployed about 375 pounds of dioxin over an area about the size of Massachusetts, contaminating the entire ecosystem and exposing millions of people — on both sides of the conflict — to horrifying long-term effects, including skin diseases and cancers among those exposed, and birth defects in their children.”*
An example occurred when paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division sprayed more than 500,000 gallons of assorted chemicals (so-called rainbow herbicides, of which Agent Orange is the most notorious) into the A Shau Valley which was one of the strategic focal points of the war in Vietnam. Located in western Thua Thien province, the narrow 25-mile long valley was an arm of the Ho Chi Minh Trail funneling troops and supplies toward Hué and Danang. Further, the United States sprayed 750,000 gallons of chemicals on Quang Tri province along the Laotian border. The United States also unleashed more bombs on Quang Tri than were dropped on Germany during World War II. The best estimate we have is that 600,000 tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam failed to detonate, about 10% of the total by the Air Force’s account. As a result, by 2014 the Vietnamese government estimated that 40,000 people had died from unexploded ordinance and another 60,000 were injured.**
The ecological, health, and legal issues created by the use of chemical defoliants during the Vietnam War are complex, internationally debated, and continue to the present day. U.S. military personnel who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam have litigated the issue for decades, seeking compensation for medical care resulting from Agent Orange exposure. They have sued both the U.S. government and the corporations who manufactured the chemical compounds. Exposure to Agent Orange can cause many diseases, from 20 forms of cancer to Type 2 diabetes and serious birth defects like cleft palates and club feet.
Despite the fact that over 30,000 books have been written about Vietnam, the latest addition to that compendium, George Black’s THE LONG RECKONING: THE STORY OF WAR, PEACE, AND REDEMPTION IN VIETNAM is a superb addendum as he documents the effect of the war today, fifty years after the Paris Peace Accords that ended the fighting focusing on Vietnam’s Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces along the Laotian border, home to a vital stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail – from the DMZ south into the A Shau Valley. Black begins his account by explaining the different factions within the North Vietnamese leadership as they approached how to unify their country with the south. Black introduces Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the Indochinese Communist Party and considered by many as the “father of the Vietnamese Revolution,” and General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military genius who engineered the victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
According to Black, Both men favored a protracted armed struggle combined with patient diplomacy and negotiations. They would be eclipsed in influence by two others, Le Duan, a member of the politburo, and Nguyen Chi Thanh, the head of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Le Duan and Nguyen Chi Thanh advocated bold acts of revolutionary violence that would trigger mass uprisings as the key to national liberation.
By the end of 1961 Thanh was made a five star general, and the Third Party Congress named Le Duan as General Secretary heading the Politburo. A third important figure introduced, Colonel Vo Bam, was placed in charge of working out the mechanics of creating what was to be known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to funnel men, weapons, and supplies into the south. By 1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s control of the country was unraveling and would soon be overthrown, an action supported by the Kennedy administration. By August 1964 Congress, pushed by President Lyndon Johnson passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and by March 1965, 184,000 American troops were in country.
Among Black’s focuses are two Americans who fought in Vietnam who are central to the narrative. The first was Manus Campbell who hailed from Bayonne, New Jersey endured the horrors of combat, first on the back roads that led east of the A Shau Valley to the city of Hue, then along the DMZ, and finally on a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it crossed from Laos into Quang Tri province an area along with Thua Thien suffered the heaviest losses of American troops in the war. As Black points out, “it was his particular misfortune to serve in the most terrible combat zone in Vietnam and at the worst possible time.” Campbell struggled for decades with the traumatic aftermath of the war and returned to Thua Thien-Hue to confront his inner demons and help in modest ways to aid those he called “the invisible victims of the war—disabled kids and orphans, including those presumed to have been sickened by the toxic defoliant known as Agent Orange.” The second American, Chuck Searcy was from Thomson, Georgia worked in military intelligence and never fired a shot in combat. In November 1994 he returned to live in Vietnam and for the past twenty years he dedicated himself mainly to cleaning up the legacy of the war in Quang Tri, the most heavily bombed province in Vietnam. Through the experiences of these men Black is able to paint a picture of how they influenced the US government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrors caused by chemical weapons and unexploded munitions that still impact so many Vietnamese.
At the outset, the American government had few qualms about employing chemical herbicides to expose the enemy’s hiding places but applying them to food crops was a different matter. Black points out that the US decided to defoliate food crops arguing the military value outweighed the potential political cost. Initially, the Pentagon and some scientists downplayed the impact of chemicals on soldiers and peasants or anyone who was exposed, a flawed opinion that so many are paying for today. The American use of herbicides was in response to the intricate and ingenious way that the North Vietnamese went about building the Ho Chi Minh Trail despite American bombing including Laos. Black carefully lays out how the trail was constructed and concludes the course of the war was radically altered by its coverage of certain areas and the dedication of Vietnamese peasants.
Campbell, age twenty, learned as did so many American soldiers that “ survival in combat was a matter of inches and feet and usually dumb luck.” Black employs Campbell’s experiences to understand what it was like to fight just south of the DMZ, how troops survived and did not, and the role of the Pentagon and politicians especially General William Westmoreland and President Johnson in decision making.
Perhaps one of Black’s most important chapters, “Tonight you are a Marine” is an excellent summary and analysis of what it was like for Vietnamese soldiers to fight the American war machine. Maneuvering along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, planning and carrying out the Tet Offensive, and the lack of supplies and food the Vietnamese soldiers had to deal with.
Roughly the first third of the book is devoted to the combat experience of the war and political decision making by both sides. Black zeros in through Campbell and to a lesser extent Searcy what it was like to be a “grunt” in the war. Black moves on to core of his narrative as he dissects American policy and its relationship with the Vietnamese government focusing on diplomatic recognition, research into the location and the effects of chemical warfare, unexploded ordnance, and the wounds and bureaucracies that prevented medical assistance to the victims that continued for decades.
Black delves into the lives of many Vietnamese and how they coped and survived. The families of Ngyuten Thanh Phu and Ngo Xuanhien provide an excellent example as they described the importance of scrap metal which was used in a myriad of ways to create items that they could not acquire including cannibalization to foster medical equipment. Further, they describe the many deaths suffered due to stepping on mines or unexploded ordnance. Their families lived in Quang Tri, an area where doctors discovered an alarming rate of children suffering from birth defects.
Black introduces a number of important characters who were essential to discovering the enormous medical and moral issues associated with the war. Jeanne Stellman, an occupational therapist, and her husband Steven, an epidemiologist conducted their own research in the mid-1980s and developed studies reflecting a clear correlation between exposure to Agent Orange and health problems. Their research showed that Center for Disease Control studies were controlled by White House political organs. The information needed for research was barred by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) until Freedom of Information requests secured their release. The research concluded that between 1961 and 1971 “more than twenty million gallons of herbicides were sprayed, covering as much as one-sixth of the surface area of South Vietnam…Agent Orange accounted for 60% of the amount…more than 3000 rural villages had come under the spray…at least 2.1 million people, and perhaps as many as 4.8 million-a figure that included only residents, not combatants or transients.”
The key individual who would help foster further research was Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt who was appointed head of the new cabinet level Department of Veterans Affairs by President H. W. Bush as by 1989 over 31,000 veterans had their claims for compensation rejected. Interestingly, Zumwalt’s son served in the Mekong Delta and in 1988 died of Hodgkin’s Disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Black carefully explores the research that went into finally proving American culpability in conducting massive chemical warfare and finally breaking the deadlock in negotiations between Vietnam and the United States. The work of Dr. Ton That Tung and his colleagues began their research in 1971 for Vietnam and they would soon learn of numerous still births, miscarriages, monster fetuses, birth defects, and liver cancer. Amazingly it was mother’s breast milk that passed on much of the toxins as women would drink from poisonous streams and lakes. Dr. Le Cao Dai, a Vietnamese researcher, and Dr. Arnold Schecter, a dioxin specialist from SUNY Binghamton corroborated these findings and continued to explore them further.
Black integrates the life stories of many important individuals in trying to rectify the atrocity of what remained for the Vietnamese people. Chief among them was Adelaide Borton, better known as Lady Borton, who began her journey in Vietnam in 1967 and would leave and return to live for many decades. She would write two books reflecting on her experiences and conveyed the stories of Vietnamese who poured their hearts out to her. In 1990 she came to live in Hanoi to work for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and “people joked that she was really Vietnamese disguised as an American.” Jacqui Chagnon and her husband Roger Rumpf went to Laos to head up the AFSC where they discovered the same issues that existed in Vietnam. Charles Bailey, an agricultural specialist headed the Ford Foundation’s efforts in Hanoi which eventually raised $47 million to ameliorate the situation. Senator Patrick Leahy who was the motivating force for Washington to fund cleanup sites and assist those who suffered birth defects from the war including in Laos. At the same time these individuals impacted the plight of the Vietnamese and Laotians, Searcy developed and enhanced existing prosthetic programs along with working on the unexploded ordnance problem.
Two Canadian scientists played a key role in the process, Chris Hatfield and Wayne Dwernychuk who founded a consulting firm, and they would dive into the problems described when the United States still in 1999 refused to devote the proper resources to assist the American vets and the Vietnamese people. They would apply Canadian resources and develop a strong working relationship with the Vietnamese governmental body called the 10-80 Committee. When 60 Minutes released a segment on what had occurred in the A Luoi Valley through interviews by Christiane Amanpour and evidence of birth defects in the children of American veterans it was difficult for Washington to ignore the problems. Hatfield’s work and the 10-80 Committee transformed the debate on Agent Orange in Vietnam.
More and more the work of Veterans, Scientists, pacifists, and some politicians interested in looking forward than looking back, chipped away at painful obstacles to normalize relations with Vietnam-first over POWs and MIAs, then prosthetics for the disabled, then the removal of unexploded ordnance, and lastly the legacy of Agent Orange. It took until 2018 for Defense Secretary James Mattis to promise an allocation of $150 million in Pentagon funds to clean up the toxins Americans had left behind at the Bien Hoa air base outside Ho Chi Minh City, one of many untreated “hot spots.” It was the first time the Pentagon openly admitted responsibility for the legacy of Operation Ranch Hand,” the code name for the defoliation campaign. For Laos it took until 2022 for the Senate to approve $1.5 million to help treat Laotian children who suffered from birth defects thanks to the work of Senator Leahy. Through the work of so many people like Searcy, Campbell, Bolton, Hatfield and a motley militia of private volunteers pursuing their own penance working with their Vietnamese counterparts’ intensive work would be done that needs to continue today.
It is clear that many individuals and their work described by Black had a tremendous impact on the lives of the Vietnamese people. It is a story that needs to be told to improve American-Vietnamese relations and help combat veterans from both sides understand what had occurred to them during the war and how to deal with the demons it fostered in their lives for decades. Black should be commended for his work publicizing the issue and bringing attention to many moral and ethical issues. Black is correct when he states, “the truth of all wars is that they never really end.”
*https://www.vvmf.org/topics/Agent-Ora...
**Black, 297.
An example occurred when paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division sprayed more than 500,000 gallons of assorted chemicals (so-called rainbow herbicides, of which Agent Orange is the most notorious) into the A Shau Valley which was one of the strategic focal points of the war in Vietnam. Located in western Thua Thien province, the narrow 25-mile long valley was an arm of the Ho Chi Minh Trail funneling troops and supplies toward Hué and Danang. Further, the United States sprayed 750,000 gallons of chemicals on Quang Tri province along the Laotian border. The United States also unleashed more bombs on Quang Tri than were dropped on Germany during World War II. The best estimate we have is that 600,000 tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam failed to detonate, about 10% of the total by the Air Force’s account. As a result, by 2014 the Vietnamese government estimated that 40,000 people had died from unexploded ordinance and another 60,000 were injured.**
The ecological, health, and legal issues created by the use of chemical defoliants during the Vietnam War are complex, internationally debated, and continue to the present day. U.S. military personnel who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam have litigated the issue for decades, seeking compensation for medical care resulting from Agent Orange exposure. They have sued both the U.S. government and the corporations who manufactured the chemical compounds. Exposure to Agent Orange can cause many diseases, from 20 forms of cancer to Type 2 diabetes and serious birth defects like cleft palates and club feet.
Despite the fact that over 30,000 books have been written about Vietnam, the latest addition to that compendium, George Black’s THE LONG RECKONING: THE STORY OF WAR, PEACE, AND REDEMPTION IN VIETNAM is a superb addendum as he documents the effect of the war today, fifty years after the Paris Peace Accords that ended the fighting focusing on Vietnam’s Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces along the Laotian border, home to a vital stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail – from the DMZ south into the A Shau Valley. Black begins his account by explaining the different factions within the North Vietnamese leadership as they approached how to unify their country with the south. Black introduces Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the Indochinese Communist Party and considered by many as the “father of the Vietnamese Revolution,” and General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military genius who engineered the victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
According to Black, Both men favored a protracted armed struggle combined with patient diplomacy and negotiations. They would be eclipsed in influence by two others, Le Duan, a member of the politburo, and Nguyen Chi Thanh, the head of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Le Duan and Nguyen Chi Thanh advocated bold acts of revolutionary violence that would trigger mass uprisings as the key to national liberation.
By the end of 1961 Thanh was made a five star general, and the Third Party Congress named Le Duan as General Secretary heading the Politburo. A third important figure introduced, Colonel Vo Bam, was placed in charge of working out the mechanics of creating what was to be known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to funnel men, weapons, and supplies into the south. By 1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s control of the country was unraveling and would soon be overthrown, an action supported by the Kennedy administration. By August 1964 Congress, pushed by President Lyndon Johnson passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and by March 1965, 184,000 American troops were in country.
Among Black’s focuses are two Americans who fought in Vietnam who are central to the narrative. The first was Manus Campbell who hailed from Bayonne, New Jersey endured the horrors of combat, first on the back roads that led east of the A Shau Valley to the city of Hue, then along the DMZ, and finally on a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it crossed from Laos into Quang Tri province an area along with Thua Thien suffered the heaviest losses of American troops in the war. As Black points out, “it was his particular misfortune to serve in the most terrible combat zone in Vietnam and at the worst possible time.” Campbell struggled for decades with the traumatic aftermath of the war and returned to Thua Thien-Hue to confront his inner demons and help in modest ways to aid those he called “the invisible victims of the war—disabled kids and orphans, including those presumed to have been sickened by the toxic defoliant known as Agent Orange.” The second American, Chuck Searcy was from Thomson, Georgia worked in military intelligence and never fired a shot in combat. In November 1994 he returned to live in Vietnam and for the past twenty years he dedicated himself mainly to cleaning up the legacy of the war in Quang Tri, the most heavily bombed province in Vietnam. Through the experiences of these men Black is able to paint a picture of how they influenced the US government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrors caused by chemical weapons and unexploded munitions that still impact so many Vietnamese.
At the outset, the American government had few qualms about employing chemical herbicides to expose the enemy’s hiding places but applying them to food crops was a different matter. Black points out that the US decided to defoliate food crops arguing the military value outweighed the potential political cost. Initially, the Pentagon and some scientists downplayed the impact of chemicals on soldiers and peasants or anyone who was exposed, a flawed opinion that so many are paying for today. The American use of herbicides was in response to the intricate and ingenious way that the North Vietnamese went about building the Ho Chi Minh Trail despite American bombing including Laos. Black carefully lays out how the trail was constructed and concludes the course of the war was radically altered by its coverage of certain areas and the dedication of Vietnamese peasants.
Campbell, age twenty, learned as did so many American soldiers that “ survival in combat was a matter of inches and feet and usually dumb luck.” Black employs Campbell’s experiences to understand what it was like to fight just south of the DMZ, how troops survived and did not, and the role of the Pentagon and politicians especially General William Westmoreland and President Johnson in decision making.
Perhaps one of Black’s most important chapters, “Tonight you are a Marine” is an excellent summary and analysis of what it was like for Vietnamese soldiers to fight the American war machine. Maneuvering along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, planning and carrying out the Tet Offensive, and the lack of supplies and food the Vietnamese soldiers had to deal with.
Roughly the first third of the book is devoted to the combat experience of the war and political decision making by both sides. Black zeros in through Campbell and to a lesser extent Searcy what it was like to be a “grunt” in the war. Black moves on to core of his narrative as he dissects American policy and its relationship with the Vietnamese government focusing on diplomatic recognition, research into the location and the effects of chemical warfare, unexploded ordnance, and the wounds and bureaucracies that prevented medical assistance to the victims that continued for decades.
Black delves into the lives of many Vietnamese and how they coped and survived. The families of Ngyuten Thanh Phu and Ngo Xuanhien provide an excellent example as they described the importance of scrap metal which was used in a myriad of ways to create items that they could not acquire including cannibalization to foster medical equipment. Further, they describe the many deaths suffered due to stepping on mines or unexploded ordnance. Their families lived in Quang Tri, an area where doctors discovered an alarming rate of children suffering from birth defects.
Black introduces a number of important characters who were essential to discovering the enormous medical and moral issues associated with the war. Jeanne Stellman, an occupational therapist, and her husband Steven, an epidemiologist conducted their own research in the mid-1980s and developed studies reflecting a clear correlation between exposure to Agent Orange and health problems. Their research showed that Center for Disease Control studies were controlled by White House political organs. The information needed for research was barred by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) until Freedom of Information requests secured their release. The research concluded that between 1961 and 1971 “more than twenty million gallons of herbicides were sprayed, covering as much as one-sixth of the surface area of South Vietnam…Agent Orange accounted for 60% of the amount…more than 3000 rural villages had come under the spray…at least 2.1 million people, and perhaps as many as 4.8 million-a figure that included only residents, not combatants or transients.”
The key individual who would help foster further research was Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt who was appointed head of the new cabinet level Department of Veterans Affairs by President H. W. Bush as by 1989 over 31,000 veterans had their claims for compensation rejected. Interestingly, Zumwalt’s son served in the Mekong Delta and in 1988 died of Hodgkin’s Disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Black carefully explores the research that went into finally proving American culpability in conducting massive chemical warfare and finally breaking the deadlock in negotiations between Vietnam and the United States. The work of Dr. Ton That Tung and his colleagues began their research in 1971 for Vietnam and they would soon learn of numerous still births, miscarriages, monster fetuses, birth defects, and liver cancer. Amazingly it was mother’s breast milk that passed on much of the toxins as women would drink from poisonous streams and lakes. Dr. Le Cao Dai, a Vietnamese researcher, and Dr. Arnold Schecter, a dioxin specialist from SUNY Binghamton corroborated these findings and continued to explore them further.
Black integrates the life stories of many important individuals in trying to rectify the atrocity of what remained for the Vietnamese people. Chief among them was Adelaide Borton, better known as Lady Borton, who began her journey in Vietnam in 1967 and would leave and return to live for many decades. She would write two books reflecting on her experiences and conveyed the stories of Vietnamese who poured their hearts out to her. In 1990 she came to live in Hanoi to work for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and “people joked that she was really Vietnamese disguised as an American.” Jacqui Chagnon and her husband Roger Rumpf went to Laos to head up the AFSC where they discovered the same issues that existed in Vietnam. Charles Bailey, an agricultural specialist headed the Ford Foundation’s efforts in Hanoi which eventually raised $47 million to ameliorate the situation. Senator Patrick Leahy who was the motivating force for Washington to fund cleanup sites and assist those who suffered birth defects from the war including in Laos. At the same time these individuals impacted the plight of the Vietnamese and Laotians, Searcy developed and enhanced existing prosthetic programs along with working on the unexploded ordnance problem.
Two Canadian scientists played a key role in the process, Chris Hatfield and Wayne Dwernychuk who founded a consulting firm, and they would dive into the problems described when the United States still in 1999 refused to devote the proper resources to assist the American vets and the Vietnamese people. They would apply Canadian resources and develop a strong working relationship with the Vietnamese governmental body called the 10-80 Committee. When 60 Minutes released a segment on what had occurred in the A Luoi Valley through interviews by Christiane Amanpour and evidence of birth defects in the children of American veterans it was difficult for Washington to ignore the problems. Hatfield’s work and the 10-80 Committee transformed the debate on Agent Orange in Vietnam.
More and more the work of Veterans, Scientists, pacifists, and some politicians interested in looking forward than looking back, chipped away at painful obstacles to normalize relations with Vietnam-first over POWs and MIAs, then prosthetics for the disabled, then the removal of unexploded ordnance, and lastly the legacy of Agent Orange. It took until 2018 for Defense Secretary James Mattis to promise an allocation of $150 million in Pentagon funds to clean up the toxins Americans had left behind at the Bien Hoa air base outside Ho Chi Minh City, one of many untreated “hot spots.” It was the first time the Pentagon openly admitted responsibility for the legacy of Operation Ranch Hand,” the code name for the defoliation campaign. For Laos it took until 2022 for the Senate to approve $1.5 million to help treat Laotian children who suffered from birth defects thanks to the work of Senator Leahy. Through the work of so many people like Searcy, Campbell, Bolton, Hatfield and a motley militia of private volunteers pursuing their own penance working with their Vietnamese counterparts’ intensive work would be done that needs to continue today.
It is clear that many individuals and their work described by Black had a tremendous impact on the lives of the Vietnamese people. It is a story that needs to be told to improve American-Vietnamese relations and help combat veterans from both sides understand what had occurred to them during the war and how to deal with the demons it fostered in their lives for decades. Black should be commended for his work publicizing the issue and bringing attention to many moral and ethical issues. Black is correct when he states, “the truth of all wars is that they never really end.”
*https://www.vvmf.org/topics/Agent-Ora...
**Black, 297.
May 25, 2023
One of the best books I've read in recent years. The author reviews the ill-fated US adventure in Vietnam in good detail, but the heart of the story is a description of the war's legacy - hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and civilians, veterans traumatized by jungle ambushes, children maimed by unexploded ordnance, and countless cases of cancer, birth defects and other disabilities caused by chemical defoliants and other harmful substances, primarily Agent Orange.
We see the war and its aftermath from many different viewpoints, those of former soldiers, Vietnamese villagers, scientists who studied the effects of Agent Orange and other forms of chemical warfare, and representatives of charitable organizations who have provided services in Vietnam and Laos.
I went through a number of stages of emotion while listening to the audiobook - anger at the politicians and generals who destroyed so many lives with their foolish and immoral acts, shame for my country’s waging of chemical warfare on peasants and villagers in rural areas (and its refusal to allow itself to be held accountable for the damage caused), sorrow for all of those killed and injured because of American hubris, disgust at the corporations who profited from the production of dangerous chemicals while insisting that they were harmless, and admiration for the acts of the few, including some American soldiers who served there, who have traveled to Vietnam and Laos to document the damage caused by the war and to try to help those harmed. And it is good that they documented the harm. The Vietnam War is far back in the rear view mirror for most Americans who remember it, but its legacy is something that Southeast Asian survivors of the "American War" still deal with on a daily basis.
Americans like to think that their nation sets a higher standard. It doesn't engage in terrorism, or use chemical weapons or target civilians. But as this book reminds us, the US has done all of those things. In Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, the US dropped huge quantities of poisonous chemicals on areas occupied by civilians, mostly in the part of the country that was supposedly controlled by the South Vietnamese government with which the US was aligned. The US Army burned Vietnamese villages and murdered their occupants. It destroyed rice fields and other agricultural areas. And when it was all over, it refused to be accountable for the harm it had inflicted.
While I was reading this book, the Russian war on Ukraine has been raging. I often read that, when the war is over, Russia will be required to rebuild Ukraine and pay for the damage that it has caused. Yet, as described in this book, the US consistently denied that the tremendous increase in birth defects in areas sprayed with Agent Orange were related to use of the chemical. When it grudgingly entered into discussions about providing aid to those injured, it insisted on freedom from liability for the corporations that produced the chemical and continued to deny that the chemicals caused the birth defects. It is no wonder that Americans are regarded as hypocrites when they condemn the actions of other countries, such as those of Russia in Ukraine.
The callous disregard for the lives of Asians came through very strongly in the book. Vietnamese and Laotians weren't people, they were "gooks." Their lives were of no value to the Americans. One wonders whether similar actions would be taken against a white nation. After all, when the US became the only country to use a nuclear weapon, it dropped the bombs on Asian civilians. White supremacy, atrocities inflicted on "inferior" races, lack of accountability, protection for the corporate entities that control politicians. It's a familiar formula in US history and a lot to live down.
But there are some whom Americans should be proud to have as countrymen. Two of those are former Marine Manus Campbell and former Army intelligence officer Chuck Searcy, who returned to Vietnam, where they had served during the war, to help heal the wounds from the war and then stayed there. The acts of Campbell and Searcy are extensively described in the book. The war led to them becoming heroes, just not in the manner that some might have expected.
This is a great book, an important book, a book that has a lot to teach us about events in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s and their significance to the world today. It should win prizes. A must read.
We see the war and its aftermath from many different viewpoints, those of former soldiers, Vietnamese villagers, scientists who studied the effects of Agent Orange and other forms of chemical warfare, and representatives of charitable organizations who have provided services in Vietnam and Laos.
I went through a number of stages of emotion while listening to the audiobook - anger at the politicians and generals who destroyed so many lives with their foolish and immoral acts, shame for my country’s waging of chemical warfare on peasants and villagers in rural areas (and its refusal to allow itself to be held accountable for the damage caused), sorrow for all of those killed and injured because of American hubris, disgust at the corporations who profited from the production of dangerous chemicals while insisting that they were harmless, and admiration for the acts of the few, including some American soldiers who served there, who have traveled to Vietnam and Laos to document the damage caused by the war and to try to help those harmed. And it is good that they documented the harm. The Vietnam War is far back in the rear view mirror for most Americans who remember it, but its legacy is something that Southeast Asian survivors of the "American War" still deal with on a daily basis.
Americans like to think that their nation sets a higher standard. It doesn't engage in terrorism, or use chemical weapons or target civilians. But as this book reminds us, the US has done all of those things. In Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, the US dropped huge quantities of poisonous chemicals on areas occupied by civilians, mostly in the part of the country that was supposedly controlled by the South Vietnamese government with which the US was aligned. The US Army burned Vietnamese villages and murdered their occupants. It destroyed rice fields and other agricultural areas. And when it was all over, it refused to be accountable for the harm it had inflicted.
While I was reading this book, the Russian war on Ukraine has been raging. I often read that, when the war is over, Russia will be required to rebuild Ukraine and pay for the damage that it has caused. Yet, as described in this book, the US consistently denied that the tremendous increase in birth defects in areas sprayed with Agent Orange were related to use of the chemical. When it grudgingly entered into discussions about providing aid to those injured, it insisted on freedom from liability for the corporations that produced the chemical and continued to deny that the chemicals caused the birth defects. It is no wonder that Americans are regarded as hypocrites when they condemn the actions of other countries, such as those of Russia in Ukraine.
The callous disregard for the lives of Asians came through very strongly in the book. Vietnamese and Laotians weren't people, they were "gooks." Their lives were of no value to the Americans. One wonders whether similar actions would be taken against a white nation. After all, when the US became the only country to use a nuclear weapon, it dropped the bombs on Asian civilians. White supremacy, atrocities inflicted on "inferior" races, lack of accountability, protection for the corporate entities that control politicians. It's a familiar formula in US history and a lot to live down.
But there are some whom Americans should be proud to have as countrymen. Two of those are former Marine Manus Campbell and former Army intelligence officer Chuck Searcy, who returned to Vietnam, where they had served during the war, to help heal the wounds from the war and then stayed there. The acts of Campbell and Searcy are extensively described in the book. The war led to them becoming heroes, just not in the manner that some might have expected.
This is a great book, an important book, a book that has a lot to teach us about events in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s and their significance to the world today. It should win prizes. A must read.
April 20, 2025
An excellent deep dive covering various important part of the war, from the geopolitics at a large scale to less known battles like Hill 647, to important local people like Nguyen Chi Ngoc Toan who studied the miscarriages and birth defects and theorized early the connection between Agent Orange and these issues. I thoroughly, enjoyed seems inappopriate, but was fascinated throughout the book reading about the marines experiences versus the NLF/PAVN experience to the American apathy towards addressing Agent Orange.
I highly suggest this to anyone who isn’t familiar with the Vietnam War (me) and even to those who are as I imagine it covers many people and events that are not as well known but important to understand the significance of.
I highly suggest this to anyone who isn’t familiar with the Vietnam War (me) and even to those who are as I imagine it covers many people and events that are not as well known but important to understand the significance of.
May 26, 2023
I was already quite aware of the impact of the American War in Vietnam on that beautiful country and its people. I have always been amazed by how the Vietnamese have been able to forgive us and move on. However, the effects of napalm, Agent Orange, other defoliants, and unexploded ordnance were even more devastating than I realized. I am so grateful to the men and women who have devoted to their lives to righting our wrongs and trying to make amends to the country and people we have damaged. I am not sure redemption is possible, but it is worth trying.
January 8, 2024
Truly the war no one won — the US poisoned Vietnam with pesticides which causes birth defects to this day (and denied wrongdoing / used corrupt data for decades), carelessly left undetonated ordnances in Vietnam and Laos that still cause deaths and lost limbs, and left many Vietnam vets dead and countless traumatized and with little support back home despite massive protests. In spite of all this, the book was a beautiful story of Americans tied to the war who came back to assist with reparations to the Vietnamese and Laotian people.
October 5, 2023
As a general synopsis this book follows the path of two American Vietnam veterans who returned to live in Vietnam. One, Manus Campell, had served as a grunt in the battlefields. The other, Chuck Searcy, was a military analyst in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh city).
But the book is far more than this. It encompasses the history of the war and its long aftermath, including a wide range of American and Vietnamese who were involved in attempting to alleviate the devastating impact of the war.
Manus Campell suffered from PTSD. After many years he saw returning to Vietnam as a possible resolution in confronting his demons. One could say that for both men the war was the central component and cataclysm of their lives. The past was always present.
The author explains the significance of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which consisted of hundreds of miles of roads and paths through the jungles of North and South Vietnam; and significantly Laos and Cambodia. It was the supply line for their forces in South Vietnam. The Americans were very aware of this – and they tried to obliterate the trails with a vast supply of weaponry. They also dumped defoliants (Agent Orange being the principal one) to kill the foliage, so they could detect the transportation trails and hubs. This became chemical warfare on a massive scale.
Page 307 (my book)
Every kind of bomb killed. Many were crude in conception, just big, heavy iron objects packed with high explosives, dropped from a great height and dependent for their effect on nothing more sophisticated than the elemental laws of physics. But other weapons used in Vietnam had been invented with a kind of fiendish ingenuity… The United States had developed almost fifty different types of cluster bombs.
Page 286 Stellman Report
The sheer magnitude of Ranch Hand [the operational name for the planes spreading Agent Orange]: more than 20 million gallons of herbicides deployed; one-sixth of the land area of South Vietnam sprayed [Laos and Cambodia as well]; anything from 2 million to 4.8 million people exposed.
This chemical warfare not only destroyed the vegetation, it seeped into the land, rivers, and streams. Some of this land was cultivated for rice. The people ate the fish that was exposed to the chemicals (U.S. soldiers, it should be pointed out, did not live off the land like the Vietnamese peasants – they had their own rations). These chemicals caused birth defects to both animals and people (cleft lip, motor deformities, cardiovascular problems and many others) that persist to this day.
Page 126 after the war in Quang Tri and Thua Thien regions on the Ho Chi Minh trail
Over the next two years, work teams repaired roads and bridges, dikes and dams. The army cleared minefields, while civilian work crews removed 6 million pieces of unexploded ordnance [UXO] losing hundreds of dead or injured in the process. Almost a quarter of the surface area of Quang Tri and Thua Thien had been contaminated by defoliants.
Page 130
A doctor from Hue, Dr, Nguyen Viet Nhan, came to Cam Lo district … and found an alarming number of children who suffered from birth defects… might all these disabilities have something to do with the chemicals the Americans had sprayed on Quang Tri during the war?
There was a long struggle to hold the U.S. government responsible. It started when Vietnam veterans in the U.S. noticed that they had physical ailments.
Non-profit organizations like the Ford Foundation started to aid the Vietnamese. Others, like Hatfield Consultants from Canada, went to Vietnam to research the connection between birth defects and Agent Orange. Most of the defects were found along the Ho Chi Minh trail and also on former U.S. airbases where it was stored and loaded unto planes and also sprayed onto the vegetation surrounding the airbase. Even worse, was in Laos and Cambodia, where Agent Orange was more concentrated in the border areas near Vietnam.
Impeding these investigations was the tremendous amount of UXOs found in these regions. Agent Orange and bombing went hand-in-hand.
There are many reasons why the U.S. government refused to recognize the effects of Agent Orange. As the author explains, when a country loses a war there is much denial and a host of conspiracy theories arise that encumber rational analysis. The U.S. for many years denied it was also prosecuting the war in Cambodia and Laos. Dow Chemical and Monsanto would not admit to the deleterious effects of Agent Orange. The sole obsession became the search for those men missing in action.
Page 197
The treatment [Vietnam] received was born instead of the primitive rancor of defeat, the refusal to acknowledge the human consequences of the war, an ingrained mistrust of Communist deceit and propaganda, and above all the fear that dioxin was a code word for reparations.
This all started to change when veterans, like Chuck Searcy, returned to Vietnam and saw with their own eyes the war’s overwhelming aftermath.
Page 203
With the passage of the Agent Orange Act [in 1991], Americans had become painfully aware of how the defoliant had blighted the lives of veterans. Now at least some of them were beginning to understand that the Vietnamese were suffering too, and in much greater numbers. The evidence was there in plain sight.
Page 248 in Quang Tri in the 1990s
At least once or twice a week, the newspapers published reports of local people killed and maimed [by UXOs], while tilling their field, cutting fire wood, or collecting scrap metal [collecting scrap from all the damaged equipment left behind could be a prosperous business].
.
Page 369
By the end of that year [1972] more than 400 million [cluster bombs] had been dropped in Laos along with some 11 million larger explosives. These numbers were not casual estimates: the air force kept meticulous records of every bombing mission, and eventually those were made public. Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. aircraft flew 580,344 sorties over Laos.
Page 373 rural village in Laos
The village woman had laid out their kitchen goods on the wooden platform outside their homes. Buckets, bowls, spoons, cooking pots, and oil lamps made from yellow “pineapple” cluster bombs, named for the vanes that spread out to stabilize their descent – everything here seemed to have begun life as part of an airplane.
The order of priority (from page 325) over the decades evolved. First it started with prosthetics – than a program to remove UXOs. Long after, Agent Orange, in 2007, moved to the forefront when Congress finally showed some atonement and passed an “Appropriations Fund” to aid Vietnam. And this itself became a work in progress
This is a searing look at the after-effects of a long war. It was through the persistent efforts of people, like Chuck Searcy, and many others who prodded foundations and their government to acknowledge and do the right thing. There were also some political motivations. With the growth of China to world power status in the 21st century both the U.S. and Vietnam saw it as advantageous to normalize relations. Part of this normalisation was an attempt at reparations for the past.
But the book is far more than this. It encompasses the history of the war and its long aftermath, including a wide range of American and Vietnamese who were involved in attempting to alleviate the devastating impact of the war.
Manus Campell suffered from PTSD. After many years he saw returning to Vietnam as a possible resolution in confronting his demons. One could say that for both men the war was the central component and cataclysm of their lives. The past was always present.
The author explains the significance of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which consisted of hundreds of miles of roads and paths through the jungles of North and South Vietnam; and significantly Laos and Cambodia. It was the supply line for their forces in South Vietnam. The Americans were very aware of this – and they tried to obliterate the trails with a vast supply of weaponry. They also dumped defoliants (Agent Orange being the principal one) to kill the foliage, so they could detect the transportation trails and hubs. This became chemical warfare on a massive scale.
Page 307 (my book)
Every kind of bomb killed. Many were crude in conception, just big, heavy iron objects packed with high explosives, dropped from a great height and dependent for their effect on nothing more sophisticated than the elemental laws of physics. But other weapons used in Vietnam had been invented with a kind of fiendish ingenuity… The United States had developed almost fifty different types of cluster bombs.
Page 286 Stellman Report
The sheer magnitude of Ranch Hand [the operational name for the planes spreading Agent Orange]: more than 20 million gallons of herbicides deployed; one-sixth of the land area of South Vietnam sprayed [Laos and Cambodia as well]; anything from 2 million to 4.8 million people exposed.
This chemical warfare not only destroyed the vegetation, it seeped into the land, rivers, and streams. Some of this land was cultivated for rice. The people ate the fish that was exposed to the chemicals (U.S. soldiers, it should be pointed out, did not live off the land like the Vietnamese peasants – they had their own rations). These chemicals caused birth defects to both animals and people (cleft lip, motor deformities, cardiovascular problems and many others) that persist to this day.
Page 126 after the war in Quang Tri and Thua Thien regions on the Ho Chi Minh trail
Over the next two years, work teams repaired roads and bridges, dikes and dams. The army cleared minefields, while civilian work crews removed 6 million pieces of unexploded ordnance [UXO] losing hundreds of dead or injured in the process. Almost a quarter of the surface area of Quang Tri and Thua Thien had been contaminated by defoliants.
Page 130
A doctor from Hue, Dr, Nguyen Viet Nhan, came to Cam Lo district … and found an alarming number of children who suffered from birth defects… might all these disabilities have something to do with the chemicals the Americans had sprayed on Quang Tri during the war?
There was a long struggle to hold the U.S. government responsible. It started when Vietnam veterans in the U.S. noticed that they had physical ailments.
Non-profit organizations like the Ford Foundation started to aid the Vietnamese. Others, like Hatfield Consultants from Canada, went to Vietnam to research the connection between birth defects and Agent Orange. Most of the defects were found along the Ho Chi Minh trail and also on former U.S. airbases where it was stored and loaded unto planes and also sprayed onto the vegetation surrounding the airbase. Even worse, was in Laos and Cambodia, where Agent Orange was more concentrated in the border areas near Vietnam.
Impeding these investigations was the tremendous amount of UXOs found in these regions. Agent Orange and bombing went hand-in-hand.
There are many reasons why the U.S. government refused to recognize the effects of Agent Orange. As the author explains, when a country loses a war there is much denial and a host of conspiracy theories arise that encumber rational analysis. The U.S. for many years denied it was also prosecuting the war in Cambodia and Laos. Dow Chemical and Monsanto would not admit to the deleterious effects of Agent Orange. The sole obsession became the search for those men missing in action.
Page 197
The treatment [Vietnam] received was born instead of the primitive rancor of defeat, the refusal to acknowledge the human consequences of the war, an ingrained mistrust of Communist deceit and propaganda, and above all the fear that dioxin was a code word for reparations.
This all started to change when veterans, like Chuck Searcy, returned to Vietnam and saw with their own eyes the war’s overwhelming aftermath.
Page 203
With the passage of the Agent Orange Act [in 1991], Americans had become painfully aware of how the defoliant had blighted the lives of veterans. Now at least some of them were beginning to understand that the Vietnamese were suffering too, and in much greater numbers. The evidence was there in plain sight.
Page 248 in Quang Tri in the 1990s
At least once or twice a week, the newspapers published reports of local people killed and maimed [by UXOs], while tilling their field, cutting fire wood, or collecting scrap metal [collecting scrap from all the damaged equipment left behind could be a prosperous business].
.
Page 369
By the end of that year [1972] more than 400 million [cluster bombs] had been dropped in Laos along with some 11 million larger explosives. These numbers were not casual estimates: the air force kept meticulous records of every bombing mission, and eventually those were made public. Between 1964 and 1973, U.S. aircraft flew 580,344 sorties over Laos.
Page 373 rural village in Laos
The village woman had laid out their kitchen goods on the wooden platform outside their homes. Buckets, bowls, spoons, cooking pots, and oil lamps made from yellow “pineapple” cluster bombs, named for the vanes that spread out to stabilize their descent – everything here seemed to have begun life as part of an airplane.
The order of priority (from page 325) over the decades evolved. First it started with prosthetics – than a program to remove UXOs. Long after, Agent Orange, in 2007, moved to the forefront when Congress finally showed some atonement and passed an “Appropriations Fund” to aid Vietnam. And this itself became a work in progress
This is a searing look at the after-effects of a long war. It was through the persistent efforts of people, like Chuck Searcy, and many others who prodded foundations and their government to acknowledge and do the right thing. There were also some political motivations. With the growth of China to world power status in the 21st century both the U.S. and Vietnam saw it as advantageous to normalize relations. Part of this normalisation was an attempt at reparations for the past.
May 24, 2023
The general who said "War is hell" probably understated the matter. Although this reader isn't anxious to find out the truth, the Vietnam War and its aftermath may well have been worse than hell. George Black's "The Long Reckoning" is an often harrowing story of the war's terrible cost to soldiers and, even worse, to the Vietnamese civilians who happened to be in the way.
The product of meticulous research, Black's painful tale shows there is plenty of blame to go around, but his focus is on exactly what happened to the stricken country and its people from the 1960s to today. One example: the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, dropped by the thousands of tons, is what scientists call a "forever" chemical. And its horrible effects are still being visited on succeeding generations of innocent Vietnamese men, women and, especially, children.
Black also reports that about 10 percent of the bomb tonnage dropped on Vietnam never exploded at the time. But these weapons (what the military calls "UXOs"..."Unexploded Ordinance") eventually do go off, killing and maiming the innocent to this day.
"The Long Reckoning" is rough stuff, but Black often celebrates the heroic efforts of American and Vietnamese in bringing aid and comfort to a still stricken population. Some are former soldiers. some wracked with guilt for what was wrought by the years of fighting. Most are part of faith-based groups who show remarkable courage in an often dangerous humanitarian mission.
Two minor quibbles: Although there are a couple of excellent maps at the outset, additional maps in context would have been helpful. And Black's narrative does jump around a bit. This may be needed in telling a complex story, but it can create some minor confusion.
The Vietnam War is not exactly over for those caught in the crossfire. This is an important book in understanding what happens when global politics "unleash the dogs of war."
The product of meticulous research, Black's painful tale shows there is plenty of blame to go around, but his focus is on exactly what happened to the stricken country and its people from the 1960s to today. One example: the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, dropped by the thousands of tons, is what scientists call a "forever" chemical. And its horrible effects are still being visited on succeeding generations of innocent Vietnamese men, women and, especially, children.
Black also reports that about 10 percent of the bomb tonnage dropped on Vietnam never exploded at the time. But these weapons (what the military calls "UXOs"..."Unexploded Ordinance") eventually do go off, killing and maiming the innocent to this day.
"The Long Reckoning" is rough stuff, but Black often celebrates the heroic efforts of American and Vietnamese in bringing aid and comfort to a still stricken population. Some are former soldiers. some wracked with guilt for what was wrought by the years of fighting. Most are part of faith-based groups who show remarkable courage in an often dangerous humanitarian mission.
Two minor quibbles: Although there are a couple of excellent maps at the outset, additional maps in context would have been helpful. And Black's narrative does jump around a bit. This may be needed in telling a complex story, but it can create some minor confusion.
The Vietnam War is not exactly over for those caught in the crossfire. This is an important book in understanding what happens when global politics "unleash the dogs of war."
June 17, 2023
My (very lucky) son just returned from a class trip to Vietnam. His class traveled around the northern part of Vietnam, including Sapa, Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, and Halong Bay. This book was interesting in its own right, but because he spent the year preparing for this trip and sharing with us information about the country and these cities and the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam, this was a must-read book for me.
It was sensational. I'd known the basics of Agent Orange and the rippling waves of damage it caused and continues to cause the people of Vietnam, but I hadn't realized the extent of U.S. ignorance when the chemical was first rolled out (and tested in Fort Drum, NY, where my dad was once stationed), first used, then thoughtlessly used again and again and again in Vietnam and Laos. I think the most extraordinary sentences of the book were towards the end when a Vietnamese woman states, "I didn't realize how bad Agent Orange was until 2003. Until then, I thought it was just rumors." The physical and mental birth defects were heart-wrenching to hear.
I appreciate the title of this book, that there is a beginning of a "reckoning" with this hideous past. As a teacher of history, it is just another example of how close history actually is--how the effects of yesterday's decisions can be seen in plain sight today. I appreciate that sometimes past mistakes are slowly (and I'm talking glacial pace) being examined and puzzled through and made slightly better. Sadly, there's no redo button. But learning from these horrible mistakes is a must-do for the current and future generations. This book is a solid step in that direction.
It was sensational. I'd known the basics of Agent Orange and the rippling waves of damage it caused and continues to cause the people of Vietnam, but I hadn't realized the extent of U.S. ignorance when the chemical was first rolled out (and tested in Fort Drum, NY, where my dad was once stationed), first used, then thoughtlessly used again and again and again in Vietnam and Laos. I think the most extraordinary sentences of the book were towards the end when a Vietnamese woman states, "I didn't realize how bad Agent Orange was until 2003. Until then, I thought it was just rumors." The physical and mental birth defects were heart-wrenching to hear.
I appreciate the title of this book, that there is a beginning of a "reckoning" with this hideous past. As a teacher of history, it is just another example of how close history actually is--how the effects of yesterday's decisions can be seen in plain sight today. I appreciate that sometimes past mistakes are slowly (and I'm talking glacial pace) being examined and puzzled through and made slightly better. Sadly, there's no redo button. But learning from these horrible mistakes is a must-do for the current and future generations. This book is a solid step in that direction.
May 8, 2023
Black has written a very thorough account of the various projects and activities carried out by U.S. citizens--and eventually the U.S. government--to help the Vietnamese recover from the massive bombing and defoliation spraying that the U.S. military conducted over Vietnam 1965-1975--in the end, to little effect. The recovery efforts included the search for MIAs, unexploded ordnance, provision of prosthetics for amputees, and care for those adversely affected by dioxin exposure via Agent Orange which involves a whole range of problems from severe birth defects to skin rashes, affecting American military personnel as well as Vietnamese. Part of these efforts was the difficulty in getting the U.S. to acknowledge the damage the war caused, not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia and among its own veterans, and what actions it should take to "make it right." Black makes this personal by focusing on the efforts of two Vietnam veterans--one who saw combat and one who worked a desk job for intelligence-as they struggle to come to grips with the consequences of the war and what they can do alleviate the suffering that lingers. A very moving and important account. Anyone interested in this still controversial war will want to read this.
April 9, 2024
One of the longest chapters in this book deals with the effects of the defoliation campaign during the Vietnam War. At first the American goal was to defoliate trees along the Ho Chi Minh Trail making it easier to target northern Vietnamese troops. Later, American forces switched to spraying rice paddies to deny enemy troops food, also destroying local civilian population staples in the process. Agent Orange led to “milk that glowed in the dark” and horrendous birth defects. Only later, after much hem-hawing, did the U.S. offer and bring about amends. The first part of the book details the absurd circularity of the war, American strategy botches and farces. Nowadays some of the U.S. “grunts” that were dragooned into it are now returning to visit and to find, amazingly, little animosity for the horrors they inflicted. Sometimes my reading ease got bogged down, but, hey, on the next page there may be a surprising insight.
May 27, 2023
4.5 stars. Interesting and moving addition to the literature of the Vietnam War. Black artfully tells a story of the war, especially around the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the US defoliation efforts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Through the personal stories of U.S. and Vietnamese veterans and civilians, Black describes the efforts of a passionate group of individuals to provide clean up and compensation for the chemical contamination of Agent Orange and the tons of unexploded ordinance. A tale of enduring pain and some redemption.
August 13, 2023
I just returned from Vietnam where I was fortunate to break bread with Chuck Searcy-one of the stars of the book. He has been in Vietnam 25 years running Project Renew which is ameliorating many of the U.S. military bombs/herbicides. Besides providing prosthetics his charity has also helped remove UXO (unexploded ordnance) and is moving on the eradication of the harmful by-products of Agent Orange et al. He was awarded a Medal of Friendship from Vietnam. I am in awe of his accomplishments and others who followed his path.
October 1, 2023
There are thousands of books about Vietnam, the war, and the aftermath. (The author provides a comprehensive bibliography of his recommendations at the end of the book.). To date I have only read five of them. I found “The Long Reckoning “ to be valuable because it is not a broad brush recounting of events. Mr. Black focuses on people, specific provinces, and long term impacts. The book was published in 2023, so it offers today’s perspective.
June 14, 2023
I’m still grappling with the fact that the fall of Saigon occurred the year before I graduated from high school. Obviously I didn’t pay much attention to the news. Furthermore, it didn’t really end, at least not for the people of Vietnam and the veterans who served there. The long lasting effects of agent orange continue to plague both populations today.
August 28, 2023
Wow. Read it as a matter of penance (although I wasn't old enough to vote during the war). LBJ and McNamara clearly were war criminals.
Americans should read this book, especially if they believe in R. Reagan's qoute that it was 'noble'.
Americans should read this book, especially if they believe in R. Reagan's qoute that it was 'noble'.
September 6, 2023
Thorough and thoughtful about the war - with emphasis on how both sides dealt with Agent Orange and unexploded ordnance in the many years following.
A sad but necessary history of grueling failures and insufficient accountability.
A sad but necessary history of grueling failures and insufficient accountability.
February 19, 2025
A 2023 Staff Nonfiction Favorite for Natalia! For readers of Fire Road by Kim Phuc Phan Thi and The Vietnam War by Geoffrey C. Ward.
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
April 13, 2023
Not only a great book about the war but more importantly what was left by the use of Agent Orange.
October 11, 2023
A bit in the weeds at times, but great perspective & reality check these many years after Nam.
February 27, 2025
A history of the tragic aftermath of the Vietnam War for those who live in Vietnam and the attempts of some to try to bring aid to these folk.
April 9, 2023
Interesting book on overcoming the perils of war and what it means to serve. I received this via the Goodreads Giveaways.
September 11, 2023
Crucial -- and often hidden -- history and legacy of the U.S. war in Vietnam, including current efforts to dismantle still dangerous unexploded ordnance and caring for children born with severe disabilities caused by exposure to Agent Orange.
Valuable read!
This is my review for the Los Angeles Review of Books:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
@lareviewofbooks
Valuable read!
This is my review for the Los Angeles Review of Books:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
@lareviewofbooks
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews