Items medium note

Series number

AWM181

Series title

Herbicide records – Vietnam War

Contents date range

1964 – circa 1985

Extent

2.5 metres

Access conditions

Subject to the Australian Archives Act 1983

Agency controlling

Australian War Memorial (and others)

Custodial agency

Australian War Memorial

Function and provenance

This series of records was used by both the Department of Defence, for theirReport on the use of herbicides, insecticides and other chemicals by the Australian Army in South Vietnam(1982), and by the subsequent Evatt Royal Commission Report on the use and effects of chemical agents on Australian personnel in Vietnam(1985).

Early investigations

From at least early as 1979 the issue of the potential effects on Australian veterans of the Vietnam War and their possible exposure to chemicals was a growing public concern in Australia. Further impetus was added in early 1980 by the establishment of Australian Veterans’ Herbicides Studies, at the request of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and a series of parliamentary questions without notice on the issue. As a result, the Department of Defence decided to conduct an examination of Army Headquarters files, particularly seeking evidence of higher-level decision making on the use of herbicides or defoliants during the war.

Yet the searches of these policy records held in the Army Office in Canberra in March 1980, and again in February 1982 did not reveal evidence that Australian troops were exposed to toxic chemicals and failed to allay public concerns. After the second unsuccessful search, it was decided to undertake a much more comprehensive search, which meant going page by page, through the entire collection of Vietnam documents to settle the matter.

Australian War Memorial involvement

Between November 1981 and March 1982, some 20,000 documents created by the Australian Army during the Vietnam War had been transferred to the Australian War Memorial, whereupon they were stored at the Memorial’s annex in the Canberra suburb of Mitchell. The Memorial therefore had barely taken custody of the records that would now need to be explored in detail for the Department of Defence report.

For a number of reasons, not least convenience and efficiency, it was decided the records would remain where they now were at the Memorial and the Defence team tasked with examining the records and writing the report would work on the Memorial premises at Mitchell. Work commenced on 8 March 1982 and occupied over 120 officers and NCOs from the Department of Defence (Army Office) over a period of three months, working in teams of up to thirty individuals at a time. Of the 20,000 files examined, some 550 were identified as being relevant to the study and were thus separated from the main consignment of Vietnam War records, forming an artificial, temporary archival series, then known simply as ‘The Herbicide Series’. Subsets within this series reflected the different headquarters or organisations from which records were drawn.

It is also worth noting that while the vast majority of records examined and/or selected for the report were held by the Memorial, evidently there were some still held by Department of Defence at the time of the survey (see ‘Murphy Guide’, pp 13, 29). There is also evidence that some files that had been transferred to the Memorial and were selected for the report, were recalled to Department of Defence custody (see ‘Murphy Guide’, p 11, eg. File 886-R1-14).

These records were then used as the source material to compile the report tabled in Parliament by the Minister for Defence on 9 December 1982, titled Report on the use of herbicides and insecticides and other chemicals by the Australian Army in South Vietnam.

The source documents included unit commander's diaries, both at headquarters and subordinate unit level, United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (USMACV) combined campaign plans from the years 1966 to 1972, and 1st Australian Task Force (1 ATF) intelligence summaries and situation reports, which filled many of the gaps in the Commander's Diaries. In addition a large number of administrative files dealing with aspects as varied as village surveys and stores and equipment were used. What these records had in common was specific information on the use of herbicides and insecticides in Vietnam.

This report demonstrated conclusively that the Australian Army had employed chemicals in much the same manner as American forces; to defoliate forests and jungle which provided concealment for enemy bases and troops and to destroy crops which enemy forces were growing. Chemicals including herbicides were also used to clear vegetation around the perimeters of Australian bases, while a range of insecticides were used for insect control.

Early public access

With the tabling in Parliament of this report on 9 December 1982, the records of the Herbicide Series were also released for public access. This release process involved the clearance of documents of non-Australian origin with the appropriate government, the clearance of documents on criteria of personal sensitivity and national security and the formal de-classification of classified documents. Some items in the series were withheld from release by the Department of Defence on national security grounds, and were noted ‘Restricted’ in the listing in the original guide; they amounted to 33 per cent of the Commander's Diaries (all those restricted being SAS Diaries) and only 3 per cent of the files. Other documents were released with some minor exceptions. Nevertheless, the series represented a large research resource available to the public well before the standard public release after 30 years. It is worth noting that almost all of the public access/restrictions made in 1982, had at the time of writing (2008), long since been reviewed and fully opened for public access.

The Evatt Royal Commission

In March 1983 the newly-elected Labor Government established the Evatt Royal Commission to investigate and report onthe use and effects of chemical agents on Australian personnel in Vietnam. The Commission opened proceedings in July 1983 and would naturally revisit the findings of studies conducted in the recent past as well as the source records, mainly held at the Australian War Memorial. While Section 6F 1 (b) of the Royal Commissions Act 1902 authorises such commissions to take temporary custody of archival records while it is sitting, it is not apparent from the records that this in fact occurred. As far as administrative records show, the material in AWM181 remained at the Memorial’s Mitchell Annex. Officers of the Royal Commission visited the Memorial’s Mitchell Annex on 21 March 1984 to inspect the source records and assess procedures used in the compilation of the Army Report, and also indicated there would be additional visits in the future.

In 1984 some records created by the Commission itself were added to series AWM181, particularly copies of their transcripts of proceedings. It was later proposed that all the Commission’s records be deposited with the Memorial because of ‘the close relationship between the records generated by the Royal Commission and the operational records generated in Vietnam’. It was also considered beneficial for future research that the records should be co-located (AWM file, 419/001/014, Jan. 1985). Despite the Memorial’s requests to the Special Minister for State that the records of the Commission be deposited into the Australian War Memorial’s custody (presumably to be incorporated into Series AWM181), this clearly did not happen. In keeping with previous methods for the disposal of Royal Commission records, they were assigned a separate series and placed in the custody of the National Archives of Australia (mainly Series A8750 and A8751). Researchers should therefore refer to the ‘Series Links’ to explore these and other Commission records held by National Archives of Australia.

After the Commission

During the period of the Department of Defence report and the Royal Commission (1982-1985), the series was simply referred to as ‘The Herbicide Series. Not until circa 1987 was it designated by the Memorial as Series AWM181. It was registered as such on the RecordSearch database on 7 June 1990, however not long afterwards, the series’ disbandment was already being mooted.

Disbanding the series

Upon the conclusion of the Royal Commission the records remained in Series AWM181 for several years. In part this was due to the need to keep these records (which were now open to the public), separate from the records remaining in their original series, which were not yet open to the pubic. In early 1998 however, as more and more records became eligible for public access, the decision was made to return the records to their original series and work on this began soon after. This was considered necessary not only from a practical point of view, but more importantly as proper archival practice. In order to better maintain provenance and original order, and in keeping with the series system employed, those records taken into AWM181 from other series in 1982, were now put back into their various original series. AWM181 had after all been created as an artificial and temporary series. Records would be maintained that could easily identify exactly which records had once been part of AWM181 prior to the disbandment and reorganisation.

Current content

As of September 2018, there remains only a small number of items in Series AWM181:

· Copies of transcripts of proceedings from the Evatt Royal Commission.

· Copies of published studies by Australian Veterans’ Herbicides Studies (AVHS).

· Working files of the AVHS interdepartmental committee.

· A small collection of administrative papers from the 1982 Department of Defence survey and report.

System of arrangement and control

The present system of arrangement and control is a relfection a largely dispersed group of records. Items in this series have been top numbered to streamline the system.

Using the series

A basic research guide to the records was produced in January 1987, which provided a descriptive introduction and a listing of files in the series.

Each item in the series is currently described by title and in some cases, more detailed item notes on the RecordSearch database. Searching by keyword in this case usually provides the best results.

Researchers may also be interested in Series AWM280. This series consists of location details of Australian units in Vietnam between 1966 and 1970. It was compiled in 1980 by a Special Projects Team within the Directorate of Coordination – Army in Army Office. The work was carried out in support of the 1985 Evatt Royal Commission on the use and effects of chemical agents on Australian personnel in Vietnam.

See also ‘Series Links’ for other related series held by National Archives of Australia.

Sources

AWM181 series dossier

AWM file, 422/007/011, Clearance of Vietnam herbicide related records.

AWM file, 419/001/014 Parts 1 & 2, Records – Royal Commission on Herbicides (Agent Orange).

Department of Defence, Report on the use of herbicides, insecticides and other chemicals by the Australian Army in South Vietnam(1982).

Evatt Royal Commission, Report on the use and effects of chemical agents on Australian personnel in Vietnam(1985).

Hansard transcript of proceedings in the House of Representatives, 9 December 1982

O’Keefe, Brendan (1994) Medicine at War: medical aspects of Australia’s involvement in Southeast Asia 1950-1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Part IV, Agent Orange: the Australian aftermath by F. B. Smith.

‘Murphy Guide’ to the Herbicide Series (1987).

'Search and Re-Search: Operation Mitchell', Helen Creagh, Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 11, No.1, May 1983.