U.S. Veteran Exposes Pentagon's Denials of Agent Orange Use on Okinawa
Thousands of barrels of Agent Orange were unloaded on Okinawa Island and stored at the port of Naha, and at the U.S. military's Kadena and Camp Schwab bases between 1965 and 1966, an American veteran who served in Okinawa claims.
In a Jacksonville Florida interview in early April with The Japan Times and Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Co., a TV network based in Okinawa, former infantryman Larry Carlson, 67, also said that Okinawan stevedores were exposed to the highly toxic herbicide as they labored in the holds of ships, and that he witnessed it being sprayed at Kadena Air Base.
Carlson is one of only three American servicemen who have won benefits from the U.S. government over exposure to the toxic defoliant on Okinawa and the first of them to step forward and reveal that massive amounts of it were kept on the island.
His claims, which are corroborated by five fellow soldiers and a 1966 U.S. government document, directly challenge the Pentagon's consistent denials that Agent Orange was ever stored on Okinawa.
"The U.S. Department of Defense has searched and found no record that the aircraft or ships transporting (Agent) Orange to South Vietnam stopped at Okinawa on their way," Maj. Neal Fisher, deputy director of public affairs for U.S. forces in Japan, recently informed the author.
But the VA's decision to grant Carlson benefits over his exposure to the herbicide appears to fly in the face of this - and similar U.S. government denials - while also offering the closest that the authorities have yet come to admitting to the presence of Agent Orange on Okinawa.
"I am the tip of the iceberg. There are many others like me who were poisoned, but the VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) is denying their claims," Carlson said during the interview at his Florida home. "I urge those men to dig in and plant their feet."
*snip*
Thousands of barrels of Agent Orange were unloaded on Okinawa Island and stored at the port of Naha, and at the U.S. military's Kadena and Camp Schwab bases between 1965 and 1966, an American veteran who served in Okinawa claims.
In a Jacksonville Florida interview in early April with The Japan Times and Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Co., a TV network based in Okinawa, former infantryman Larry Carlson, 67, also said that Okinawan stevedores were exposed to the highly toxic herbicide as they labored in the holds of ships, and that he witnessed it being sprayed at Kadena Air Base.
Carlson is one of only three American servicemen who have won benefits from the U.S. government over exposure to the toxic defoliant on Okinawa and the first of them to step forward and reveal that massive amounts of it were kept on the island.
His claims, which are corroborated by five fellow soldiers and a 1966 U.S. government document, directly challenge the Pentagon's consistent denials that Agent Orange was ever stored on Okinawa.
"The U.S. Department of Defense has searched and found no record that the aircraft or ships transporting (Agent) Orange to South Vietnam stopped at Okinawa on their way," Maj. Neal Fisher, deputy director of public affairs for U.S. forces in Japan, recently informed the author.
But the VA's decision to grant Carlson benefits over his exposure to the herbicide appears to fly in the face of this - and similar U.S. government denials - while also offering the closest that the authorities have yet come to admitting to the presence of Agent Orange on Okinawa.
"I am the tip of the iceberg. There are many others like me who were poisoned, but the VA (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) is denying their claims," Carlson said during the interview at his Florida home. "I urge those men to dig in and plant their feet."
*snip*
