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Contamination at Largest US Air Force Base in Asia: Kadena, Okinawa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Jon Mitchell
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Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States Air Force installation in Asia.

Equipped with two 3.7 kilometer runways and thousands of hangars, homes and workshops, the base and its adjoining arsenal at Chibana sprawl across 46 square kilometers of Okinawa's main island. Approximately 20,000 American service members, contractors and their families live or work here alongside 3,000 Japanese employees. More than 16,000 Okinawans own the land upon which the installation sits.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 9 , May 2016 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

References

Notes

1 Data from Okinawa Prefecture available in Japanese here and here.

2 Data from Government of Japan Ministry of Defense available in Japanese here.

3 Masaaki Kameda, “U.S.-Japan environmental agreement on U.S. bases flawed, experts say,” The Japan Times, September 29, 2015. Available here.

4 See for example: Jon Mitchell, “Vietnam: Okinawa's Forgotten War”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 15, No. 1, April 20, 2015. Available here.

5 Ryukyu Asahi Housou, “Karehazai o abita shima”, May 15 2012.

6 See for example here.

7 Department of Defense, “Japan Environmental Governing Standards,” December 2012. Available here.

8 Jon Mitchell, “FOIA Documents: Drunk US Marine's 2015 dump of toxic foam among accidents polluting Okinawa water supply”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 7, No. 3, April 1, 2016. Available here.

9 Ibid.

10 Jennifer McDermott, “Military to check for water contamination at 664 sites,” Associated Press, March 10, 2016. Available here.

11 For more on the risks of lead contamination, see the WHO report available here.

12 For more information on asbestos, the WHO report is here.

13 “28 Japanese confirmed with asbestos injuries from working at U.S. bases”, Kyodo, January 8 2014. Available here.

14 For example, see Jon Mitchell, “Okinawa - The Pentagon's Toxic Junk Heap of the Pacific,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 47, No. 6, November 25, 2013. Available here.

15 Jon Mitchell, “FOIA Documents Reveal Agent Orange Dioxin, Toxic Dumps, Fish Kills on Okinawa Base. Two Veterans Win Compensation, Many More Denied”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 39, No. 1, October 5, 2015. Available here.

16 Also see: Jon Mitchell, “Military Contamination on Okinawa: PCBs and Agent Orange at Kadena Air Base”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 12, No. 1, March 24, 2014. Available here.

17 For the EPA overview of the dangers of PCBs see here.

18 Erik Slavin, “Elevated lead levels found in some school, day care drinking fountains”, Stars and Stripes, August 22, 2014.

19 For example, see Jon Mitchell, “Kadena moms demand truth”, The Japan Times, January 21, 2014. Available here.

20 Jon Mitchell, “What Lessons Can Vietnam teach Okinawa about U.S. Military Dioxin?”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, No. 2, February 1, 2016. Available here.

21 Alexander Nazaryan, “Camp Lejeune and the U.S. military's polluted legacy”, Newsweek, July 16, 2014.

22 Emerson Urry, “The Department of Defense Is the Third Largest Polluter of US Waterways”, Truthout, February 15, 2016. Available here.

23 Jon Mitchell, “Agent Orange and Okinawa: the story so far”, The Japan Times, April 28, 2016. Available here.

24 The full report is available to download here.