Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Jon Mitchell
Jon Mitchell is a Welsh-born writer based in Yokohama, represented by Curtis Brown, NY. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal associate and lectures at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
For Jon Mitchell's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
National Aug 21, 2013
Oliver Stone warmed to Okinawans, fired up base foes
On Aug. 13, a dozen anti-base demonstrators scuffled with police outside the gates of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa, as marines watched from behind the fence cracking jokes and laughing. Such scenes occur daily in Okinawa, which is saddled with ...
National Aug 7, 2013
Okinawa dump site may be proof of Agent Orange: experts
The recent discovery of 22 barrels buried on former U.S. military land in the city of Okinawa could be posing the same level of risks to local residents as dioxin hot spots in Vietnam where the American military stored toxic defoliants during the 1960s ...
History Jul 27, 2013
A drop in the ocean: the sea-dumping of chemical weapons in Okinawa
Accounts by U.S. veterans in the accompanying feature of tons of chemical weapons being dumped off Okinawa in autumn 1969 are the first time such revelations have been made public — but in fact they tally entirely with the Pentagon’s standard operating procedures at ...
Life Jul 27, 2013
Exclusive: Red Hat's lethal Okinawa smokescreen
In July 1969, a leak of chemical weapons on Okinawa sickened more than 20 U.S. soldiers and laid bare one of the Pentagon’s biggest Cold War secrets: the storage of toxic munitions outside of continental United States. Public outrage following the Okinawa accident forced ...
Issues | THE FOREIGN ELEMENT Jun 4, 2013
'Okinawa bacteria' toxic legacy crosses continents, spans generations
Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City houses one of Vietnam's busiest maternity clinics, but hidden in a quiet corner, far from the wards of proud new mothers, is a room stacked floor to ceiling with every parent's nightmare.
Issues | THE FOREIGN ELEMENT Jun 4, 2013
As evidence of Agent Orange in Okinawa stacks up, U.S. sticks with blanket denial
In April 2011, these Community pages published the first accounts of sick U.S. veterans who believe their illnesses were caused by exposure to Agent Orange on Okinawa during the Vietnam War era.
Lifestyle May 28, 2013
281_Anti Nuke's anger at authority is at a critical mass
More than two years after the triple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, hundreds of thousands of residents of the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu remain displaced, the power station teeters on the brink of further disaster and large swaths ...
National Feb 15, 2013
U.S. report to deny Agent Orange in Okinawa
A Pentagon probe into the presence of Agent Orange in Okinawa is set to support veterans' allegations of the clandestine burial of harmful chemicals — but deny the defoliant was among them.
National Jan 12, 2013
'71 Pentagon paper says Agent Orange was stored on Kadena Air Base
A single sentence buried among 7,000 pages of documents recently released by the Pentagon might well be the needle in the haystack that conclusively proves the U.S. military stored toxic herbicides, including Agent Orange, in Okinawa during the Vietnam War. American veterans have long ...
| THE ZEIT GIST Dec 4, 2012
'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'
Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as “biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests,” the highly classified ...
Issues | THE ZEIT GIST Dec 4, 2012
'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'
Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as “biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests,” the highly classified ...
Life Nov 11, 2012
The war legacy that binds Okinawa and Vietnam
As the motorbike taxi I’m aboard zigzags through the traffic in Da Nang, Vietnam’s fourth-largest city, a bus pulls out of nowhere, causing my driver to brake, swerve and slam us into a sidewalk stack of bamboo cages packed with soft plump ducklings. It’s ...