During the Vietnam War, hundreds of U.S. Navy ships crossed into
Vietnam’s rivers or sent crew members ashore, possibly exposing their
sailors to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange. But more than 40 years
after the war’s end, the U.S. government doesn’t have a full accounting
of which ships traveled where, adding
The Navy could find out where each of its ships
operated during the war, but it hasn’t. The Department of Veterans
Affairs says it won’t either, instead choosing to research ship
locations on a case-by-case basis, an extra step that veterans say can
add months – even years – to an already cumbersome claims process. Bills
that would have forced the Navy to create a comprehensive list have
failed in Congress.
As a result, many ailing vets, in a
frustrating race against time as they battle cancer or other
life-threatening diseases, have taken it upon themselves to prove their
ships served in areas where Agent Orange was sprayed. That often means
locating and sifting through stacks of deck logs, finding former
shipmates who can attest to their movements, or tracking down a ship's
command history from the Navy's archive.
“It's hell,” said Ed
Marciniak of Pensacola, Fla., who served aboard the Norfolk-based USS
Jamestown during the war. “The Navy should be going to the VA and
telling them, ‘This is how people got aboard the ship, this is where
they got off, this is how they operated.’ Instead, they put that burden
on old, sick, dying veterans, or worse – their widows.”
Some 2.6
million Vietnam veterans are thought to have been exposed to – and
possibly harmed by – Agent Orange, which the U.S. military used to
defoliate dense forests, making it easier to spot enemy troops. But vets
are eligible for VA compensation only if they went on land – earning a
status called “boots on the ground” – or if their ships entered
Vietnam’s rivers, however briefly.
The VA says veterans aren’t
required to prove where their ships patrolled: “Veterans simply need to
state approximately when and where they were in Vietnam waterways or
went ashore, and the name of the vessel they were aboard, and VA will
obtain the official Navy records necessary to substantiate the claimed
service,” VA spokesman Randal Noller wrote in an email.
Once the
VA has that documentation, the vessel is added to a list of ships
eligible for compensation, streamlining future claims from other
crew members. But proactively searching thousands of naval records to
build a comprehensive list of eligible ships – as some veterans have
demanded – “would be an inefficient use of VA’s resources,” Noller said.
Because
the records searched by the VA are sometimes missing or incomplete,
veterans groups say the fastest and surest way to obtain benefits is for
vets to gather records themselves and submit them as part of their
initial claims.
More than 700 Navy ships deployed to Vietnam
between 1962 and 1975. Veterans have produced records to get about half
of them onto the VA’s working list, with new ships being added every
year. Still, veterans advocacy groups estimate about 90,000 Navy vets
are not eligible to receive benefits related to Agent Orange exposure,
either because their ships never entered inland waters, or because they
have yet to prove they did.
This story was prepared in partnership with ProPublica.
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