Japan-based journalist Jon Mitchell has made it his life’s work to investigate and record the many ways in which he sees the Pacific Ocean has been systematically damaged by poisonous chemical, biological and nuclear agents over the decades.
Intentional degradation via nuclear testing formed one strand of his thesis, while contamination and accidental damage made up the greater part of his overall series of investigations that have culminated in his most recent book ‘Poisoning the Pacific.’
The US Navy has long had a presence in the mid-Pacific region in the State of Hawaii and since World War Two, across the Western Pacific, Japan, the Marshall Islands and Guam, to name but a few. His book pulls no punches as Mitchell does not shy away from discussing how these overseas territories were administered in ‘colonial’ terms, with the US seizing local resources and vast tracts of land to construct military bases.
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