All right.
I spent my time in Korea with the Royal Canadian Engineers. I suppose because of my age, being 18, I was just another gung-ho young soldier. Much of what I know now never crossed my mind. It probably should have, but.... Shortly after my return to Canada I re-mustered to the Royal Canadian Medical Corps, and I became a preventive medicine technician. I must admit I did start to wonder about some of the things that happened to me and my buddies.
Safety precautions as we know them today were non-existent. There wasn't much in the way of protective clothing, respirators, or ear defenders. In my fifteen-plus years in the medical corps, I soon learned about many things that we should have had, and many things that we should have avoided. That was over 50 years ago. We sprayed or dusted our clothing with what we know now to be very toxic substances, DDT and Lindane. Needless to say, both of these items are carcinogenic, but we just sprayed our clothing in good faith because it was going to help us.
Nowadays the environmentalists would say to us that we shouldn't even be touching that stuff without protective clothing. And if you look at what it did to the bird population in North America, and you translate that to humans, it was quite bad. It got so bad that stringent rules of the environmentalists have pretty well done away with the use of DDT and Lindane in North America, and in a lot of other countries as well. I'd be very remiss if I were not to say that there were lots of other chemicals that were in use. Much of the petroleum, oil, and lubricants--and these were simply the things that you used to keep your vehicles on the road--were used rather indiscriminately as well. The full list of toxic chemicals that one might come into contact with in Korea was indeed long.
If you've heard of a dangerous chemical, quite likely it was in Korea back in the fifties. Even some of the medications used have been found to be harmful. Paludrine was an antimalarial drug of the era. The side effects are wide-ranging. Today it is considered to be about 60% effective. Most people had a daily dose. What harm did it do? Really only a very well-trained physician dealing with numerous malarial patients can adequately answer that question. Canada has very few such physicians. Even the lowly salt pill was found to be dangerous to some.
For many years we've been trying to get some real answers about the effects of these chemicals, but generally to no avail. One of our members suggested for years that he suffered from the adverse effects of chemical poisoning. He had numerous conditions, and he felt they were directly linked to the chemicals. As Les pointed out a moment ago, eventually he took his $10,000, went to Texas, and had a bank of tests performed on him. The tests verified that what he thought was really the truth. I personally feel this was not just an isolated incident. This was one person, but there probably were others. A lot of people have died. Did they die from these chemical poisonings? A lot of people die and no one ever finds out the real reason why. It could be said that above all else, Korea was not a terribly healthy place to serve as a serviceman.
I've been actively involved in this file for eight years. I have listened to a lot of stories and heard of many conditions. When people know that you are meeting with VAC or have met with VAC, they often want their case reviewed. I believe we have a good working relationship with VAC. Progress is being made, but sometimes it's a bit too slow.
The adoption of the Australian studies has been a giant step forward. For years we tried to have a similar Canadian study conducted, but to no avail. These three studies present many of the same facts that would likely have been brought forth in a Canadian study. If we accept the studies at face value, we must surely conclude that veterans of the Korean war were much more likely to have contracted many diseases than the average Canadian civilian, or even servicemen in other theatres. Cancer rates are very high; the overall death rate is too high.
In the Australian studies it was found that soldiers represented the greatest proportion of the deadly conditions, the navy a slightly lower proportion, and the air force lower still. It is felt that Canadians likely parallel the Australians, since most of our troops served in the same areas and ate the same sort of food under basically the same conditions.
Many Canadian servicemen feel frustrated by the whole pension process. In the area of appeals, the Veterans Review and Appeal Board is an ongoing concern. Many feel that the board members are not knowledgeable enough about the diseases and Korea, as it was 50 years ago.
Once again, on behalf of my fellow Korean War comrades, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon.