As the only individual in a lawsuit against 35 U.S. chemical companies, Tran To Nga, a French woman of Vietnamese origin, has recently become a target of the media.

She filed a lawsuit against the companies for producing the toxin sprayed over Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. It was accepted by the Superior Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) of Paris, France.

During interviews with the media, she always stresses, “This is the last contribution of my life to my people.”

At 72, she is well aware that she is challenging a grand economical power to find justice for millions of victims.

“I sue for millions of my people,” Nga said.

The U.S. military first sprayed herbicides and defoliants over crops and forests in Vietnam in 1961. During the peak of their mission ‘to destroy trees to expose VC [Vietnamese communist soldiers]’ from 1965 to 1970, the American forces deployed over 20,000 flights to spray 13.05 million gallons, or 49.4 million liters, of dioxin toxin across Vietnam.

Over four decades have elapsed but toxic substances still affect the people and environment of Vietnam, plaguing the Vietnamese with cancer, mental disabilities, serious skin diseases, cleft palates, and various genetic diseases and deformities.

A life of devotion

Tran To Nga was born to a wealthy family in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City. At 13, she was sent to northern Vietnam to study and graduated from the chemistry faculty of the General University.

After graduation, she and her friends set off to cross Truong Son Trail to return to southern Vietnam, where her mother still lived.

She was assigned to work in the media in the south of Vietnam.

“I once ran to hide from rockets. I engaged in battles which were heavily bombed. I witnessed my comrades being killed by fragmentation bombs.

“I buried my friends with my bare hands. I was also hung up and tortured in prison cells. And I gave birth and raised my child alone in prison,” Nga said in a calm manner.

Her comrades always remind her of her own life as a hallmark of the day of liberation, April 30, 1975, when she was released from prison by the Saigon administration and found her way home with her 4-month-old child.

She said she would never forget her prison days when she was given a half bulb of boiled sweet potato, a fried cricket with a peanut inside, and a piece of dried fish by her fellow prisoners to help keep her child.

A prison guard would even save her some rice at mealtimes.

“The sharing helped me become stronger to protect the baby inside of me while I was tortured.

“Nurses and aides at Cho Quan Hospital [in Saigon] helped me a lot when they learned I was a political prisoner,” Nga recalled.

“Remembering the help they gave me renews my passion,” she stressed.

After the national liberation, Nga was assigned headmaster of three schools: Le Thi Hong Gam, Marie Curie, and Technical Pedagogy.

Then, money was hard to come by, so she had to keep pigs, chickens, and fish at home to supplement her meager income.

“During my 16 years at the three schools, I sometimes regretted my lack of knowledge that caused troubles to my colleagues and students,” she confessed.

But she was pleased with her own efforts because she “managed and struggled for the happiness of the people.”

Business in France

Later in life, Nga set up a travel company named Lien Hong, which is named after her two daughters Viet Hong and Viet Lien.

Thanks to the company, she guided groups of French people to see the nature, history, and people of Vietnam.

With her connection between Vietnam and France, French veterans raised funds to build schools and hospitals in remote areas of the Southeast Asian country that were ravaged during wartime such as Dien Bien Phu, Cao Bang, Tuyen Quang, Phu Tho in the north and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta.

In 2004, Nga was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by the French government, giving her the chance to be granted French nationality.

Whenever she returns to her old house on Tran Huu Trang Street in Ho Chi Minh City, she burns joss sticks for her mother and grandmother, asking them to renew her strength and keep her oath “to struggle for the happiness of the people.”

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