Drew Brown

Janis Roznowski has made it her mission to provide comfort to wounded veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Their mission: to raise money for Vietnam veterans who want to return to this southeast Asian country for the first time since the war but can’t afford to make the trip.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses. To this day, dioxin continues to poison the land and the people. The U.S. has never accepted responsibility for these victims, and it’s unclear when this chain of misery will end.

James R. Clary was a young Air Force officer and scientist who designed the spray tank for the C-123 cargo planes that dispensed Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam War. Thirteen years after the conflict ended, with serious concerns being raised in Congress about the effects of defoliants on veterans’ health, Clary dropped a startling bombshell: Military scientists had known that herbicides shipped to Vietnam were contaminated with dioxin and had “the potential for damage” to human health.

Dang Chi Trung and his sister, Dang Chi Tam, live in a small house that once belonged to their parents. The children of lifelong Communist Party members who fought against the French in the 1950s and the Americans a decade later, they live on a government allowance of about $60 a month. Both parents are deceased, leaving Dang Chi Trung, 44, to care for his sister, who’s 43. She’s mentally disabled because of her parents’ exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She is completely dependent on her brother.