Masako Sakata's personal link with Agent Orange
After making two award-winning documentaries about the dangers of Agent Orange, Masako Sakata is completing a third film about nuclear energy in Japan. She was in Hong Kong this week to show her work at the FCC
Masako Sakata made the first of her documentaries, about the dangers of Agent Orange, to help her deal with the death of her husband, photographer Greg Davis.
Davis served with the US military in Vietnam before he became a photographer covering Asia for Time magazine. Exposure to Agent Orange was a suspected cause of his death.
Agent Orange – a personal requiem was Sakata's first film. It has won several awards in Japan and Europe. The sequel, Living the Silent Spring, was released in 2011 and has also received global awards.
Sakata's third film will appear later this year and will focus on the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear tragedy in Japan in April 2011.
The Vietnamese Red Cross said as many as a million people have disabilities or health problems associated with Agent Orange. About 100,000 of them are children.
The United States stopped using the Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam in 1971 after scientists discovered it contained dioxin, which caused cancer in laboratory animals.
