Sole US-Philippine responsibility for contamination

[Don Zweifel <zweifel@chapman.edu>]

To whom it may concern:

Regarding Nick Morgan's comments on "UXO's and toxics at former US bases
in the Philippines."

What is the issue here? Is it basically US and possibly Philippine
government culpability for all the unexploded ordnance and/or
environmental pollution at our former military installations? The ready
answer would be most assuredly yes if one looked at it with the narrowest
possible definition.

However pat and overly hasty responses do not take into consideration the
big picture and/or the historical context. 

Let's look at the record over the past 50+ years.

Japan committed aggression on the Philippines in 1941 and remained until
their forces were eliminated in 1945. Fierce air, land and sea battles
were fought mainly on and around Mindanao and Luzon. The Japanese
occupied Clark Field and Subic Bay Naval Base and did not leave willingly.

Much of the contamination that occurred during this extremely destructive
war was due to the former enemy's downed warplanes and sunken warships,
many of which can still be found lying and leaking toxic chemicals into
Manila and Subic Bay and many other areas indigenous and contiguous to its
archipelago.

Therefore it is our contention that the current and future governments of
Japan have a moral and ethical responsibility, a culpability if you will,
to clean up all of this detritus of war. It is also our premise that they
are those which decided precipitously and calamitously to initiate the
hostilities from the get-go. 

The Japanese government on the other hand, has refused to apologize for
the attack on Pearl Harbor and has informed its citizenry that they were
not actually responsible for beginning the war. A moot point, one may
conclude, but is it? 

Must we arbitrarily limit the extent of their government's environmental
liability chronologically? Couldn't it conceivably include all of the
contamination generated from the war in the Pacific, i.e., every allied
ship and airplane downed and all unexploded ordnance no matter who fired
or dropped it? 

When the environmental cost of waging war becomes so deleterious to future
generations governments may propose to forgo it. A futile and fruitless
supposition? The potential for the eradication of our species is not
beyond the realm of possibility.

But on to other matters. 

Who should fund this proposal? Does'nt Japan have the deepest pockets and
the probability of being the most blameworthy?

Unfortunately, Japan's war reparations to the US, Philippine and other
allied governments did not calculate this factor into the calculus in
1946. Who'd have surmised that the jetsam and flotsam of this horrible war
might come back to haunt us all. 

Our contention is that it should not be part of the US government's
purview to remediate the sins of another world power no matter how
generous some of its citizens believe we could be.

The fight for the Philippines was a terribly costly one for the US, the
Philippine government and its people. Haven't we paid enough in American
and Philippine blood? Isn't it time to expect a fair and equitable 
remuneration for unleashing the dogs of war?

 Don Zweifel
 Dir., Gulf & Vietnam Vet's Historical/
 Strategic Studies Assn