911 Truth for Aotearoa

truthmama · Joined: 01 May 2008 Posts: 190 Location: Wellington

Human Cost of War: Anthony Phillip
US soldier becomes hibakusha
David McLane

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m45094&hd=&size=1&l=e
Anthony Phillip
©2008 David McLane

June 22, 2008

"I was feeling sick, really weak, and I had blood in my urine and I didn't know what was going on, and I went to the doctor at Walter Reed Army Hospital and they were telling me it was combat fatigue, you're just tired, you just need to relax and you'll be fine. And I said, No, it's more than that, you know, I had rashes on my back, a lot of rashes on my back. I was so weak I couldn't stand up straight." -- Anthony Phillip

Last spring, my partner/wife, Sueko, and I were asked to accompany a reporter from a major news organization in Japan on a trip across the US to gather material for a series of articles tentatively titled "The Human Cost of War." She was coordinator and I was photographer.

We learned about soldiers becoming sick from depleted uranium from a book published in Japan, Hibakusha Ni Natta Iraq Kikanhei (Returning Iraq Soldiers become Hibakusha). After many telephone calls Sueko was able to set up an appointment with Anthony at his house in Middletown, New York.

He continued by saying, "I didn't know what was going on and I got in touch with one of my soldiers, Sergant Ramos, and he's the one that was having the same similar problems I was having, the headaches, the headaches were BAD. Ahhh, I don't believe my headaches. And I said, 'Something doesn't seem right.' And then he made a couple of phone calls and then that's how we ended up getting tested for depleted uranium. And it came back positive, and the symptoms we were having are because of depleted uranium."

When asked how well the Army took care of him and others, he said:
"But when we went to the Army with our tests and said, Listen can you test us for this, and they says there's no test available; we don't test soldiers for that. And then we went to this newspaper and the newspaper put up everything. And then the Army said, Come back, we'll test you, but we don't have, you can't file, we don't recommend it, we don't acknowledge it, because it's not that, it's something else."
But Anthony began to find there were more and more soldiers coming back with the same problems who managed to get tested and found to be positive for uranium 236.

According to Anthony, "The only way you could get uranium 236 in your body is, how could you get that, when I asked the military, a colonel, at Walter Reed, I said, How could you get uranium 236 in your body. He said the only way you could get that is if you worked in a chemical plant, that's the only way you could get that. There's no other way you could get it. And I said, Well, I was not in a chemical plant in Iraq. But the military doesn't test you for uranium 236, it tests you for uranium 238. They don't test you for uranium 236 at all."

"The state [New York] has just passed new laws so others coming back from Iraq can get tested too. The military doesn't test you but each state has their own laws so when their soldiers come back they can get tested by their own state, because they feel depleted uranium is really bad; it should be banned."

"I've still got the weak legs, I've still got the migraine headaches, I've got pills, I'm going to show you all the medications are out on a table and I sleep with a machine at night time to help me breathe, because I stop breathing at night time. They gave me a machine; when I stop breathing it gives me air. And the rashes, they give me medications for the rashes. They give me cream, two kinds of cream to put on my back. Plus I take a pill for the rashes."

©2008 David McLane

©2008 David McLane

Anthony joined the New York State Army National Guard in 1999 and went one weekend a month and two weeks a year for training. He's originally from Trinidad and came to the United States in 1984.

When asked why he joined the military he said, "They give you so much here I wanted to give to the country back because I had a lot of freedom and a lot of things I didn't have in Trinidad so I joined to say Thank you." He only became a citizen when he came back from Iraq. Although he's considered 90 percent disabled, he works as a supermarket market manager about an hour's drive from his home and has applied for 100 percent disability.

On the day we talked with him, he had just come back from work and was wearing a "Go Army" tie pin and there were more than a dozen photos of him in Iraq lining the wall of the staircase that led from the front door to the living room.

©2008 Anthony Phillip

He said that he had no problems before going to Iraq or when he was there; they all started when he came back. He seemed more wistful than angry when he said, "When we went to Iraq they didn't train us, they didn't teach us anything, they didn't show us, we didn't know anything. So when something happened and we drove next to a blown-up tank or building we would touch everything; nobody told us anything. We didn't know!

"Then we came back and there is a training video. They said they showed everybody a training video before they go to Iraq. They never showed ME a training video!"