Agent Orange is Okinawa's smoking
gun By Jon Mitchell
Since 1945, the small Japanese island of
Okinawa has been unwilling host to a massive US
military presence and a storehouse for a witches'
brew of dangerous munitions and chemicals,
including nerve gas, mustard gas, and nuclear
missiles. However, there is one weapon the
Pentagon has always denied that it kept on
Okinawa: Agent Orange.
Now, for the first
time, a recently uncovered US army report reveals
that, during the Vietnam War, the United States
stockpiled 25,000 barrels of Agent Orange on the
Pacific island. The barrels, containing over 1.4
million gallons of the toxic defoliant, were
brought to Okinawa from Vietnam before being taken
to Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, where the US
military incinerated its
stocks of the compound in 1977.
Contradicting decades of denial by
Washington, the report is the first direct
admission by the US military that it stored these
poisons on Okinawa. A series of photographs was
also uncovered, apparently showing the 25,000
barrels in storage on Okinawa's Camp Kinser, near
the prefectural capital of Naha.
The army
report, published in 2003 but only recently
discovered, is titled "An Ecological Assessment of
Johnston Atoll." Outlining the military's efforts
to clean up the tiny island that the United States
used throughout the Cold War to store and dispose
of its stockpiles of biochemical weapons, the
report states directly, "In 1972, the US Air Force
brought about 25,000 55-gallon (208 liter) drums
of the chemical Herbicide Orange (HO) to Johnston
Island that originated from Vietnam and was stored
on Okinawa."
A leaky story In
the early 1970s, the US government banned the use
of Agent Orange in Vietnam after scientific
studies showed the dioxin-tainted herbicide posed
a serious threat to human health. The timeframe
covered by the recently discovered report suggests
that the barrels were a part of Operation Red Hat
- the military's 1971 operation to remove its
12,000-ton store of chemical weapons (including
mustard gas, VX, and sarin) from Okinawa in
preparation for the island's reversion to Japanese
control the following year.
This is not
the first time that Agent Orange has been linked
to Red Hat. According to a 2009 statement from the
US Department of Veterans Affairs, "The records
pertaining to Operation Red Hat show herbicide
agents were stored and then later disposed in
Okinawa from August 1969 to March 1972." However,
attempts to access the sources the VA used to make
that statement - including the filing of multiple
Freedom of Information Act requests - have been
hampered by US authorities, and the Pentagon has
refused to help former service members who claim
they were exposed to toxic defoliants during the
operation.
Lending weight to suspicions
that the barrels were shipped as part of Operation
Red Hat was the discovery by independent
researcher Nao Furugen of a set of photographs in
the Okinawa Prefecture's archives. The images were
taken during a US military public relations event
designed to assure the local media that the safety
procedures in place for Operation Red Hat were
sound. In the background of the shots, there is a
large stack of barrels. Apparently striped with
painted lids, they are consistent with the way in
which the US military shipped herbicides during
the Vietnam War.
But according to
documents supplied by veterans involved in the
shipment of stocks of Agent Orange to Johnston
Island, the barrels arrived in various stages of
deterioration. Some accounts show that almost
9,000 of the 25,000 barrels developed leaks on
Johnston Island, leading to the contamination of
large areas of land.
These accounts have
caused alarm in Okinawa, where local residents
have been urging the authorities to conduct
environmental tests within the bases where US
veterans allege Agent Orange was stored. However,
both Tokyo and Washington have refused these
requests.
During the past year and a half,
dozens of US veterans have spoken out about the
use, storage, and disposal of Agent Orange on
Okinawa during the 1960s and 70s. During this
period, the island was a major staging point for
the US war in Vietnam - where the United States
sprayed millions of liters of Agent Orange,
poisoning tens of thousands of its own troops and
approximately 3 million Vietnamese people. Many
former service members stationed on Okinawa claim
that they are suffering from similar illnesses due
to exposure to the herbicide. However, the US
government is only known to have paid compensation
to three of these veterans, including a former
soldier who was poisoned while handling thousands
of barrels of Agent Orange at Naha Port between
1965 and 1967.
Exposing the
truth There is increasing evidence to
suggest that ordinary Okinawans, including the
50,000 employed by the US military during the
Vietnam War, were also affected. However, attempts
to organize health surveys have been stymied by
the authorities. According to Masami Kawamura -
cofounder of Okinawa Outreach, the citizens' group
at the forefront of demands for a full inquest
into Agent Orange use on the island - the Okinawan
Prefectural government "claimed that if they
'investigated blindly' without identifying
locations with 'high probabilities' of being
contaminated with [Agent Orange], this could just
create rumors harmful to the communities."
Following the discovery of the army
report, 10 former service members wrote a letter
to the US Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
demanding a full investigation into the military's
use of Agent Orange on Okinawa. "We have a strong
desire to do the right thing for all of the US
veterans who were exposed to herbicides/Dioxin on
Okinawa as well as for Okinawa," states the
letter, which was organized by former Air Force
sergeant Joe Sipala.
Sipala, who believes
he was exposed to Agent Orange on the island in
1970, and the nine other veterans have offered to
travel to Washington to testify on the issue. The
former service members were angered last year when
the US government and Japan's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs suggested that the veterans' accounts of
herbicides on Okinawa were dubious.
"That
is insulting to the credibility and integrity of
the men and women who served honorably, giving up
years of our young lives to protect our great
country of the United States of America and the
island of Okinawa," says Sipala's letter.
Sipala said that he hopes the letter will
convince the US government to provide compensation
to veterans who believe they were exposed to Agent
Orange on Okinawa. At the moment, the government
provides help to US veterans who were exposed to
military herbicides in Vietnam, Thailand, and
along the demilitarized zone in Korea. But the
Pentagon's denials about the presence of these
herbicides on Okinawa have prevented hundreds of
these veterans from receiving aid. Now it would
appear those denials are losing currency.
John Olin, the Florida-based researcher
who discovered the 2003 army report, says he will
keep investigating the military's use of Agent
Orange on Okinawa. "Right now we have two
governments - Japan and the US - who were actively
working together for many decades to lie to their
citizens," he said. "There is an obvious
disinformation campaign on this issue that only
makes me want to look closer."
This is a
revised and expanded version of an article that
appeared in The Japan Times on August 7, 2012. A
Japanese translation is available here.
Jon Mitchell teaches at the
Tokyo Institute of Technology and is an
Asia-Pacific Journal associate. In September 2012,
Defoliated Island, a TV documentary based upon his
research, was awarded a commendation for
excellence by Japan's National Association of
Commercial Broadcasters. An English version of the
program is currently in production in order to
assist US veterans exposed to military defoliants
on Okinawa.
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