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“Herbicide Stockpile” at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa: 1971 U.S. Army report on Agent Orange

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Jon Mitchell
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Abstract

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A single sentence buried among 7000 pages of documents recently released by the Pentagon might well be the needle in the haystack that conclusively proves the U.S. military stored toxic herbicides, including Agent Orange, on Okinawa during the Vietnam War. American veterans have long claimed that large volumes of these chemicals were present on the island and hundreds of them are suffering from serious illnesses they believe were triggered by their exposure. But the U.S. government has repeatedly denied their allegations, insisting it has no records related to the issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , e4
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 2013

References

Notes

1 For a comprehensive introduction to the U.S. military's usage of Agent Orange on Okinawa see here

2 For the VA's list of the locations the Pentagon currently admits military herbicides were stored see here

3 “Agent Orange at base in ‘80s: U.S. vet”, The Japan Times, June 15, 2012 (available here)

4 “Agent Orange Buried on Okinawa, Vet Says”, The Japan Times, August 13, 2011 (available here)

5 See for example Fred Wilcox, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam”, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2011.

6 See Jon Mitchell, “Agent Orange on Okinawa - The Smoking Gun: U.S. army report, photographs show 25,000 barrels on island in early ‘70s,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 40, No. 2, October 1, 2012. Available here

7 See here for a Japanese-language TV report on a follow-up meeting between MoFA and Citizens’ Network for Biodiversity in Okinawa. The NGO's homepage can be accessed here

8 See Jon Mitchell, “Agent Orange on Okinawa - New Evidence,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 48 No 1, November 28, 2011. Available here

9 The full text of this case is available from the VA website here