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Military Contamination on Okinawa: PCBs and Agent Orange at Kadena Air Base

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Jon Mitchell
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In January, U.S. service members and their families stationed on Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rallied together to demand an investigation into a dioxin dumpsite located near two Department of Defense schools.

For decades, Kadena Air Base has been the largest US Air Force (USAF) installation in the Pacific region - and this dioxin usage has taken its toll on the health of the land, nearby residents and on-base service members.

The Pentagon is notoriously secretive as far as military pollution on Okinawa is concerned - it allows neither the Japanese government nor Okinawa officials to conduct environmental checks on its installations - but now two U.S. government documents offer a glimpse behind the wire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 12 , March 2014 , e1
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 2014

References

Notes

Many thanks to Bob McCarty, author of Three Days in August and The Clapper Memo, for speaking out about the PCB contamination at Kadena Air Base.

1. For a full account of the issue, see here.

2. See for example 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, here.

3. For current EPA information and policies related to PCBs, see here.

4. For an interview with Arakaki Seiryo regarding the wider implications of military pollution on Okinawa, see “Jon Mitchell, “Pollution rife on Okinawa's U.S.-returned base land”, The Japan Times, December 4, 2013, available here.

5. See Mitchell, November 25, 2013.

6. USFJ Media Advisory #2014003, “First Round of Environment Stewardship Consultations Begins,” February 12, 2014.

7. The full text of the ruling is available online here.

8. See Jon Mitchell, “U.S. Vets Win Payouts Over Agent Orange Use on Okinawa,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 10, Issue 8, No 2, February 20, 2012. Available here.

9. See Jon Mitchell, “'Deny, deny until all the veterans die’ - Pentagon investigation into Agent Orange on Okinawa,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 23, No. 2. June 10, 2013. Available here.

10. See Jon Mitchell, “Herbicide Stockpile at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa: 1971 U.S. Army report on Agent Orange,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 1, No. 5, January 14, 2013. Available here.

11. See Jon Mitchell, “Okinawa Dumpsite Offers Proof of Agent Orange: Experts Say,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 38, No. 1, September 23, 2013. Available here.

12. See Travis Tritten, “New soil tests at Kadena Air Base schools find no herbicide, dioxin”, Stars and Stripes, February 27, 2014. Available here.