Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military's Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange

316 Pages·2020·4.335 MB·English

by  Jon Mitchell

P O I S O N I N G
T H E P A C I F I C
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 1 6/18/20 1:58 PM
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 2 6/18/20 1:58 PM
P O I S O N I N G
T H E P A C I F I C
The US Military’s Secret Dumping
of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons,
and Agent Orange
Jon Mitchell
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 3 6/18/20 1:58 PM
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mitchell, Jon, 1974– author.
Title: Poisoning the Pacific : the US military’s secret dumping of plutonium, chemical
weapons, and Agent Orange / Jon Mitchell.
Other titles: US military’s secret dumping of plutonium, chemical weapons, and Agent
Orange
Description: Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield, [2020] | Series: Asia/Pacific/
Perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057067 (print) | LCCN 2019057068 (ebook) | ISBN
9781538130339 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781538130346 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: War—Environmental aspects—Pacific Area. | Nuclear weapons—
Environmental aspects—Pacific Area. | Nuclear weapons—Environmental
aspects—United States. | Radioactive pollution—United States. | Radioactive
pollution—Pacific Area. | Chemical weapons disposal—United States. | Chemical
weapons disposal—Pacific Area. | Offenses against the environment—Government
policy—United States. | Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Environmental aspects. | World
War, 1939-1945—Environmental aspects.
Classification: LCC TD195.W29 M58 2020 (print) | LCC TD195.W29 (ebook) | DDC
363.7309164—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057067
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057068
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 4 6/18/20 1:58 PM
CONTENTS
Author’s Note vii
Foreword by John W. Dower ix
Introduction 1
1 Japanese Weapons of Mass Destruction and the US Cover-up 9
2 Nuclear Warfare in Japan and the Marshall Islands 31
3 Okinawa: “The Junk Heap of the Pacific” 55
4 Military Herbicides, Vietnam, and Okinawa 81
5 Polluting with Impunity 103
6 Okinawa: Paradise Lost 127
Timeline: Environmental Contamination and
Accidents on Okinawa (1947–2019) 149
7 Japan: Contamination, Nuclear Deals, and the
Fukushima Meltdowns 153
8 Toxic Territories: Guam, the Commonwealth of the
Northern Mariana Islands, and Johnston Atoll 175
9 Toward Environmental Justice 199
v
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 5 6/18/20 1:58 PM
vI POISONING THE PACIFIC
Appendix: Contaminants 215
Notes 225
Bibliography 271
Acknowledgments 275
Index 279
About the Author 299
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 6 6/18/20 1:58 PM
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Whenever possible, internet links to primary source documents are in-
cluded in the endnotes; however, many of the reports related to Okinawa
were released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and have not yet
been made widely available. Key documents cited in Poisoning the Pacific
are available on the book’s homepage under the “Resources” tab at https://
rowman.com/ISBN/9781538130339, with the hope that all those who have
been sickened and medical professionals might be able to better under-
stand the scope of exposure.
Also included as an appendix at the end of this book is an alphabetical
list of contaminants and a brief explanation of their potential health effects
adapted from the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Japanese names are given surname first; yen-dollar conversions are based
on a rate of 110 yen to the dollar.
vii
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 7 6/18/20 1:58 PM
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 8 6/18/20 1:58 PM
FOREWORD
John W. Dower
During World War II, American song writers produced a flood of patriotic
tunes addressing the war in Asia, including one titled To Be Specific It’s Our
Pacific. In the wake of Japan’s defeat, a popular journalistic coinage carried
this a step further by referring to the now pacified Pacific Ocean area as
“the American Lake.” It was taken for granted that victory did not merely
establish US dominion over the Pacific and its land masses, including Japan
and mid-ocean islands like Guam and Micronesia. Victory also placed the
forward edge of US military might within close range of China and the
Soviet Far East—no small matter in a new age of strategic air power and
nuclear weapons.
In short time, the rhetoric of expansion and entitlement became framed
in less colloquial terms—“national security,” for instance, and consolidation
of an anti-Communist “free world” governed by rule of law. “Pax Ameri-
cana” became the popular label for an unprecedented global imperium
of US military bases, with scores of major facilities in the former enemy
nations of Japan and Germany notable among them. Today—over seven
decades after the end of World War II, and three decades after the end of
the Cold War—the United States maintains nearly eight hundred overseas
bases, ranging in size from small garrisons to mini-cities. These are spread
across more than seventy nations.
The pronounced mission of this far-flung empire of bases is, of course, to
preserve the peace. And in postwar Korea and Southeast Asia, the United
ix
20_0092_Mitchell.indb 9 6/18/20 1:58 PM