Okinawa: The Pentagon’s Pacific junk heap [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Japan/JAP-01-271113.html



Okinawa: The Pentagon’s Pacific junk heap
By Jon Mitchell
Nov 27, '13

In June 2013, construction workers unearthed more than 20 rusty barrels from beneath a soccer pitch in Okinawa City. The land had once been part of Kadena Air Base - the Pentagon's largest installation in the Pacific region - but was returned to civilian usage in 1987. Tests revealed that the barrels contained two ingredients of military defoliants used in the Vietnam War - the herbicide 2,4,5-T and 2,3,7,8-TCDD dioxin. Levels of the highly toxic TCDD in nearby water measured 280 times safe limits. [1]

The Pentagon has repeatedly denied the storage of defoliants - including Agent Orange - on Okinawa. [2] Following the discovery, it distanced itself from the barrels; a spokesperson stated it was investigating if they had been buried after the land's return in 1987 [3] and a US government-sponsored scientist suggested they may merely have contained kitchen or medical waste. [4] However, the conclusions of the Japanese and international scientific community were unequivocal: Not only did the barrels disprove Pentagon denials of the presence of military defoliants in Japan, the polluted land posed a threat to the health of local residents and required immediate remediation. [5]

The Pentagon is the largest polluter on the planet. [6] Producing more toxic waste than the US's top three chemical manufacturers combined, in 2008 25,000 of its properties within the US were found to be contaminated. More than 100 of thee were classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as Superfund sites which necessitated urgent clean-up. [7]

Although Okinawa Island hosts more than 30 US bases - taking up 20% of its land - there has never been a concerted attempt to investigate levels of contamination within them. Unlike other nations with US bases such as South Korea and Germany, the Japanese government has no effective powers to conduct environmental checks, nor does the Pentagon have a duty to disclose to the public any contamination that it knows to exist. [8]