Her children are 21 and 16 years old, but they still cry through the night, tossing and turning in pain, sucking their thumbs for comfort.
Tran Thi Gai, who rarely gets any sleep herself, sings them a mournful lullaby. "Can you feel my love for you? Can you feel my sorrow for you? Please don't cry."
Gai's children — both with twisted limbs and confined to wheelchairs — were born in a village that was drenched with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She believes their health problems were caused by dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in the herbicide, which U.S. troops used to strip communist forces of ground cover and food.
American veterans exposed to Agent Orange suffer from a variety of ailments, sometimes crippling. There are links to birth defects in their children such as spina bifida (one reason I'm glad I was born before my father went to Vietnam). But in Vietnam itself, many more people were exposed to the herbicide, and there are many birth defects that may be linked to it. The American government provides some aid to the cleanup of dioxin and help to those who were affected by it, but insists that a causal relationship has not been established when dealing with the Vietnamese even for the illnesses for which it pays benefits to former servicemen exposed to the chemical.
"American and Vietnamese Agent Orange victims haven't been treated the same way, and it's not fair," said Tran Xuan Thu, secretary general of the Vietnam Agent Orange Victims Association, whose suit against the U.S. manufacturers of Agent Orange in 2005 was rejected by a U.S. court. "It's not in keeping with the humanitarian traditions of the United States. I hope the American people will raise their voices and ask their government and the chemical companies to take responsibility."
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