HANOI: Vietnam military has started cleaning up an airport from residues of the highly toxic Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War.
The defence ministry's Chemical Command started the clean-up job at A So airport in Thua Thien Hue Province, after it was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Located in A Luoi District, it is about 100 km from the town of Hue, which is the country's imperial capital. The airport was built by the United States in the 1960s and was used during the Vietnam War.
According to a Vn Express International report, between August 1965 and December 1970, A Luoi District was among the places where the US sprayed Agent Orange most intensively.
It was reported that from 1961 to 1971, the US military made 19,905 sorties and sprayed about 80 million liters of deadly chemicals over farmlands and forests in Vietnam. This affected over 78,000 sq km of land in southern Vietnam.
Agent Orange is a compound of dioxins and dioxin-like mixtures. Dioxin stays in the soil and at the bottom of water bodies for generations, entering the food chain through meat, fish and other animals, and has been found at alarmingly high levels in human breast milk.
It is estimated that between 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent Orange and other chemicals before the war ended in April 1975.
These chemicals have been linked to cancers, birth defects and many chronic diseases that afflict multiple generations.
According to government data, around 11 kg of dioxin was sprayed on A So airport and it is estimated that the chemical has seeped 0.7 m into the soil and a total of 35,000 cubic meters of land at the airport is now contaminated.
In 2020, the military's Chemical Command received approval for work to remove dioxin from the airport until 2022 at a cost of VND70 billion (US$3 million).
The Vn Express International reports Lieutenant Nguyen Phuong Minh, deputy head of the military's biology unit saying that the process of removing dioxin has faced problems since the airport lies in a valley with many groundwater streams.
With around 200 soldiers and officers, he said the team was now targeting to finish the clean-up work by the year-end.
He added that they take contaminated soil from the airport and treat it using advanced biotechnology before bringing the clean soil back.
Meanwhile in Japan, award-winning Japanese documentary film director Masako Sakata has been on a quest for answers about the tragic fallout caused by Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.
Her American husband Greg Davis had served three years in the US military in Vietnam through 1970 and was later diagnosed with liver cancer, believed due to his exposure to the toxic defoliant.
According to a Kyodo News report, she produced "Agent Orange -- A Personal Requiem," a documentary film in 2007 and also a Japanese-language series highlighting how the interests of government are put ahead of humanity in times of war.
Although Vietnam has developed significantly now, children are born even today with severe deformities and disabilities believed to have been caused by the defoliant.
Through her lens, Sakata tries to capture what the war has meant over time for the people who continue to struggle with scars that have never fully healed.
Her latest work "Long Time Passing" to be released later this month in Tokyo, depicts the daily life of Tran Thi Hoan, a young woman born without legs and one of her hands.
While pregnant, her mother had been exposed to the defoliant in a field. Hoan, who graduated from university and works at a hospital, spent her childhood at a facility founded for children affected by Agent Orange.
The Kyodo News report said that others born with severe disabilities and their aging families who care for them in challenging, poverty-stricken rural areas are also featured in the series.
Sakata has also featured a court battle in France by a former journalist against US chemical firms that manufactured the Agent Orange used in the war.
Sakata also revisits the lives of some of the people who appeared in "Requiem," a film which showed the debilitating effects of the toxic chemical on the human body that lasts for generations and how the Vietnamese have struggled to support victims.
The debut film won several prizes, including the Mainichi documentary film award, the Paris International Environmental Film Festival special prize and the Earth Vision special jury award.
In 2011, she released the sequel, "Living the Silent Spring" about the dangers chemical agents pose to humanity. In it, children of US Vietnam War veterans and their struggles with disability are explored.
"I wanted to show that nothing has been resolved even 60 years since the spraying (of the defoliants) began," she added.
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