In April 2011, The Japan Times Community section published the first accounts of U.S. service members who alleged that exposure to Agent Orange on Okinawa sickened themselves and their families. Five years and 30 articles on the issue later, military documents, photographs and testimonies from hundreds of veterans suggest Vietnam War defoliants were stored, sprayed and buried throughout the island.
In 2014, all the key components of Agent Orange were discovered at a former military dumpsite in Okinawa City; last June, nearby water was found to be contaminated with dioxin, the poison that makes defoliants so dangerous, at 21,000 times government safety levels.
Despite this apparently incontrovertible evidence, the Pentagon continues to deny there is any proof defoliants were ever present on Okinawa, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded compensation to only a handful of those claiming exposure on the island.