War is said to be the ultimate cause of environmental destruction. The absolute devastation of the environment in combat has been proven by examples such as World War II, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War. However, even in peacetime, military activity causes environmental destruction through the construction of facilities, everyday activities on base, and the preparation for war such as military training and maneuvers. Particularly in the case of the United States, the enormous military power that accounts for half of the world's military expenditures, the destruction of the environment is appalling. For example, in Japan, the damage to nature that would accompany the construction of an alternative facility to Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa will be accelerated and aircraft noise will damage the areas surrounding the bases. In the Korean community of Mehyang-ri, aerial bombing practice has caused severe environmental pollution. This essay will focus on the pollution of US bases in Asia in order to come to grips with the environmental problems caused by military activity. After investigating the pollution of US bases in Yokota (Japan), Okinawa and the Philippines, we will examine the principal conclusions that can be draw from those examples. Our purpose is to locate ways to resolve these military environmental problems.

Next year, 2010, marks the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of what is aptly called “The Forgotten War.” While Kim Il-sung's invasion of the Republic of Korea in the early hours of June 25th, 1950, ignited the first hot war of the cold war – and the first and only war in which the two superpowers would clash on the battlefield – it is a war that is almost dead to the public mind and popular culture of the western world.

It was a savage war in a devastated land; a war that was civil, ideological and even racial in nature, a war that sucked in fighting men from as far afield as Columbia and China, Ethiopia and Russia. It was a war in which entire US units were annihilated, an intense war which generated casualties far in excess of those incurred in today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet despite its many dramatic elements – and despite the fact that it has never really ended - Korea never achieved the same status in the western mind as did the wars that bookmarked it: World War II and Vietnam.

Shortly after British forces surrendered in Singapore on 15 February 1942, the Japanese military began operation Kakyou Shukusei [a] or Dai Kenshou [b], known in the Chinese community of Singapore as the Sook Ching (“Purge”) [c], in which many local Chinese were massacred.[1] Although the killings have been investigated extensively by scholars in Malaysia and Singapore, this article draws on Japanese sources to examine the events.