Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States 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 at Chibana
sprawl across 46 square kilometers of Okinawa's main island.
Approximately 20,000 American service members, contractors and their
families live or work here alongside 3,000 Japanese employees. More than
16,000 Okinawans own the land upon which the installation sits.
Kadena Air Base hosts the biggest combat wing in the USAF -- the 18th
Wing -- and, during the past seven decades, the installation has served
as an important launch pad 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 USAF 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 US 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 Japanese civilians living in neighboring communities.
Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the Environment
In Japan, there are 130 US bases -- 32 of which are located on
Okinawa -- but the Americans who serve upon them and local residents
know nothing of the dangers these installations pose to human health or
the environment.
At the root of the problem lies the Japan-US Status of Forces
Agreement (SOFA) which makes no allowances for Japanese officials to
conduct pollution checks within US bases -- nor does it hold the
military responsible for cleaning up land returned to civilian usage.
In 2015, Washington and Tokyo tagged a supplementary agreement onto
SOFA giving local authorities the right to request a base inspection
following a spill. However so far, the Pentagon has failed to
green-light any such checks.
Since SOFA absolves the US of all financial responsibility to clean
up contaminated land, the costs are borne by Japanese tax-payers. The
financial burden of military contamination is particularly heavy on
Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, where US bases take up roughly 20% of Okinawa's main island but contribute only 5% to the prefecture's economy.
In Chatan Town in 2002, for instance, the cost to clean up 187
barrels of unknown chemicals dumped by the US military amounted to
approximately 20 million yen. Elsewhere redevelopment of land returned
from Camp Kuwae, has been delayed for more than 12 years due to
contamination from arsenic, lead and oil.
