Thua Thien-Hue (VNA/VNS) - What started out as a gesture of good willhas become Richard Hughes’ passion and destiny as he knocks on doors andcrosses oceans in search of justice for Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.

Richard "Dick" Hughes is an American actor who gained worldwide famefor forming a gang of Saigon street boys during the Vietnam-US war and livingwith them.

Wartime Vietnam first impacted on the consciousness of the Pittsburgh-bornactor when he was working at the Theatre Company of Boston, a year after hisgraduation from Boston University Graduate School of Drama in 1967.

As a conscientious objector, Hughes borrowed money from friends and travelledto Saigon under a press visa. While there, he helped to found the Dispatch NewsService, which later became known for distributing the exclusive story on the MyLai massacre.

In 1968, Hughes set up Shoeshine Boys hostels after being touched by aconversation with a bui doi (street) boy. The project sheltered andfed 1,500 youngsters in Saigon and Da Nang, mainly boys but also some girls,some of them handicapped.

“I arrived in Saigon expecting to do something meaningful for people here, butI didn’t do enough, " he says in an interview with the English language daily Vietnam News.

In 1976, Hughes was forced to leave Vietnam, returning to the US, where heattempted to restart his interrupted acting career.

But Vietnam was always on his mind. In 2001, he paid his first revisit to Vietnamafter 25 years and has since been back four times.

On his flights back to the US, he always feels he has left with an unfinisheddebt. “I felt guilty for the impact of the war. Of course I didn’t come with agun, I came with helping hands, but insomnia appears every time I think of whatthe Vietnamese people endured during the war,” he said.

A few years ago he received a photo book on the war by his friend, Welsh warphotojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths, and the obsession with the AO victimsreturned.

In October 2016, he flew back to Vietnam to compile data about the lives of theAgent Orange victims in order to fill out applications demanding equality forthem.

In the United States Hughes has been working with Democratic Senator SheldonWhitehouse, who used to drop in to visit his street children on Pham Ngu Lao streetin Saigon in the early 1970s. “We are hoping to get a Republican senator tohelp as well, [perhaps] something like senators John Kerry and John McCain didfor normalising diplomatic relations,” Hughes said.

Hughes feels a sense of urgency to help the victims of the deadly and corrosiveAmerican chemical defoliant, and not only because of possible changes in USpolicy under a new president. “The war ended a long time ago, but what we havedone for them is too little," he says.

Hughes has sent materials to television shows like CBS and others, and preparedan article for The New York Times about AO and on his October trip,during which he went in depth in investigating the lives of AO victims in HCMCity, Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Tri, Da Nang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Hanoi.

Although he looks somewhat like Clint Eastwood, that’s not the reason he iswelcomed everywhere, nor is due to his Vietnamese language skill. It’s thesense of humour, simplicity and, most important, the warm sentiment he producesin every single person he meets.   

At 74, Hughes is far from done. “My destiny is linked to that of Vietnam,"he says.-VNA/VNS