For the first time, documents released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act reveal extensive pollution on an active American base in Japan.
Located
in the center of Okinawa island, Kadena Air Base is the largest U.S. Air Force
installation in Asia.Equipped with two 3.7-kilometer runways and thousands of
hangars, homes and workshops, the base and its adjoining arsenal sprawl across
46 square kilometers. More than 20,000 American service members, contractors
and their families live or work on the base alongside 3,000 Japanese employees.
Kadena Air Base hosts the biggest
combat wing in the U.S. Air Force — the 18th Wing — and, during the past seven
decades, the installation has served as an important launchpad for wars in
Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.
Given the long history of Kadena Air
Base and its city-sized scale, it is easy to understand why the U.S. Air Force
calls it the “keystone of the Pacific.”
But until now, nobody has realized
the damage the base is inflicting on the environment and those who live in its
vicinity. Documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act reveal
how years of accidents and neglect have been polluting local land and water
with hazardous chemicals, including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs), asbestos and dioxin. Military authorities have often hidden this
contamination, putting at risk the health of their own service members and the
184,000 civilians living in neighboring communities.
This week, we examine the pollution
of local water resources and the exposure of on- and off-base residents to lead
and asbestos. The accompanying article explains the flaws in current guidelines
that allow the U.S. military in Japan to conceal such contamination.
Next week, we will investigate the
installation’s ongoing struggles to manage contamination from PCBs, its coverup
of the discovery of hazardous waste near two on-base schools and the human
impact of this pollution.
In January, the U.S. Air Force
released 8,725 pages of accident reports, environmental investigations and
emails related to contamination at Kadena Air Base. Dated from the mid-1990s to
August 2015, the documents are believed to be the first time such recent
information detailing pollution on an active U.S. base in Japan has been made
public.
