[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL: "Documents reveal hundreds of unreported environmental accidents at three U.S. Marine Corps bases on Okinawa" (Japan)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Contamination: Documents reveal hundreds of unreported environmental accidents at three U.S. Marine Corps bases on Okinawa
Documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the U.S. military has been keeping hundreds of environmental accidents at three of its most important bases on Okinawa under wraps

by Jon Mitchell
Japan Times
November 19, 2016

Since 2002, at least 270 environmental accidents on U.S. Marine Corps bases on Okinawa have contaminated land and local waterways but, until now, few of these incidents have been made public. Internal reports highlight serious flaws in training and suggest the lessons of past accidents have not been effectively implemented. Moreover, recent USMC guidelines order service members not to inform Japanese authorities of accidents deemed “politically sensitive,” raising concerns that many incidents may have gone intentionally unreported.

Catalogued in 403 pages of USMC handbooks and reports obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the accidents occurred on three of the USMC’s most important installations on Okinawa: Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Camp Hansen and Camp Schwab. The earliest report is dated June 2002 and the most recent is from June 2016.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/11/19/national/contamination-documents-reveal-three-u-s-bases-okinawa-slow-disclose-environmental-accidents#.WDFrEYV4EYU

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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