Background of the poem

This poem was written in memory of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, as known as the American War, was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975 when Saigon fell.

The Viet Cong, a lightly-armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The United States entered the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment.

During the Vietnam war, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed 12,000,000 US gallons of chemical defoliants in South Vietnam as part of the aerial defoliation program known as Operation Ranch Hand. 20 percent of South Vietnam's jungles were sprayed over a nine year period. The first objective was to reduce the dense jungle foliage so that Communist forces might not use it for cover and to deny them use of crops needed for sustenance. In 1965, 42 percent of all herbicide spraying was dedicated to food crops. The second objective was spot clearing in sensitive areas such as around base perimeters. It was also used to drive civilians into RVN-controlled areas.

In 1963, the United States (suspecting the negative effects) initiated a study on the health effects of Agent Orange that by 1967 confirmed that the chemical caused cancer, birth defects and other serious health problems.
Links to pictures of affected Vietnamese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agent-orange-deformities-vietnam.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_vietnamese_Professor_is_pictured_with_a_group_of_handicapped_children.jpg