Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-2mk96 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-10T22:59:48.331Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Were U.S marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Jon Mitchell
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Growing evidence suggests that the U.S. military tested biochemical agents on its own forces on the island in the 1960s of unwitting American service members around the globe to substances including sarin and VX nerve gases between 1962 and 1974.

According to papers obtained from the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the 267th Chemical Platoon was activated on Okinawa on Dec. 1, 1962, with “the mission of operation of Site 2, DOD (Department of Defense) Project 112.” Before coming to Okinawa, the 36-member platoon had received training at Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal, one of the key U.S. chemical and biological weapons (CBW) facilities. Upon its arrival on the island, the platoon was billeted just north of Okinawa City at Chibana — the site of a poison gas leak seven years later. Between December 1962 and August 1965, the 267th platoon received three classified shipments — codenamed YBA, YBB and YBF — believed to include sarin and mustard gas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 51 , December 2012 , e2
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 2012

References

Notes

1. The Department of Veterans Affairs maintains a partial introduction to Project 112, and its accompanying CBW tests aboard ships, Project SHAD, here

2. “Organizational History - 267th Company” has now been uploaded for public access here

3. Factsheets describing some of the tests to which the Pentagon has admitted can be read on this Department of Defense site here. The site was last updated in 2003 - and Okinawa does not appear on it.

4. 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.

5. Albert Mauroni, “Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Reference Handbook”, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, 2003.

6. For a concise summary of these allegations, see here.

7. Sheldon H. Harris, “Factories of Death”, Routledge, London, 1994, 129.

8. Ibid., 233.

9. Ibid., 232.

10. See information on the Department of Veterans Affairs homepage here.

11. The full text of the GAO report is available here.

12. “Operation Red Hat: Men and a Mission” - a 1971 Department of Defense documentary detailing the removal of these munitions - can be watched here.

13. Jon Mitchell, “Agent Orange at Okinawa's Futenma Base in 1980s,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 25, No. 3, June 18, 2012.