Evidence
Proving where the ship was.
Classification cases are won on paper — most of it written by the Navy itself, at the time, and kept by the government ever since. These are the doors, in the order a family usually needs them.
Deck logs — the ship's own diary
A Navy deck log records, day by day, where a ship was: her anchorages, her movements, boats away, work performed. For a Blue Water claim, the deck log is often the decisive document — it can place a ship inside the 12-nautical-mile line, at a pier, or in a harbor on the dates that matter. Vietnam-era deck logs are held by the National Archives (Record Group 24), and many are digitized. This site's own live pull: USS ARIKARA's logs for December 1969–February 1970.
The VA ship list
The VA maintains a list of Navy and Coast Guard vessels associated with Agent Orange exposure — ships that docked, anchored in harbors, or operated on inland waterways, and ships whose crews went ashore. If your ship is on it, the VA has already conceded the hardest fact in the case. The list is reached from the VA's Agent Orange hub — check your ship, and check it again after updates.
A worked example, from this site's founding record: USS ARIKARA (ATF-98) appears on the list twice — for salvage operations on the Saigon River (August 1966), and for docking to piers at Da Nang (September–December 1969). Two lines on a VA list settled the exposure question the VA had spent decades contesting. Yours may already be there too.
Documents like these — the lists, the logs, the examiners' own words — are the spine of the record kept at DearDougCollins.com: They Knew, the dated series on what was documented at the time, how long it was denied, and what finally forced each concession.
The Agent Orange Registry exam
Any veteran who believes they were exposed can receive a free Agent Orange Registry health evaluation at a VA medical center — no enrollment in VA health care is required first, and the exam is not a claim and does not replace one. Its value to the record: the VA's own examiners write down the exposure history, in the VA's own words, inside the VA's own chart. Ask your nearest VA facility for the Registry exam by name.
Service records and the DD-214
A lost DD-214 can be replaced, and a full service record requested, through the National Personnel Records Center — start at the National Archives' veterans pages. Muster rolls and personnel files can corroborate who was aboard, and when. Buddy statements — signed accounts from shipmates who were there — remain real evidence; write them plainly, with dates, and keep them factual.
Denied before 2020? Ask about Nehmer.
Under the Nehmer consent decree, herbicide claims denied between September 25, 1985 and January 1, 2020 that the new law would grant were to be readjudicated — with effective dates reaching back toward the original claim. If a denial in your family predates the Blue Water Act, a free accredited representative can tell you whether Nehmer reaches it. Find one through VA Resources, and bring the old denial letter — it is the key document.
Information only, not legal or benefits advice. Records availability varies by era and archive; where a record cannot be found, that fact itself belongs in the file.