Operation Red Hat - Agent Orange, Red Hat and Okinawa

Agent Orange, Red Hat and Okinawa

It is not clear how the subjects of Agent Orange and Operation Red Hat became interconnected but it appears that storing and disposing herbicide agents with the more deadly chemical agents required some amount of study and at that time the records of Agent Orange and Operation Red Hat became intertwined. The document declassification process may be further confounded by the fact that the Operation Red Hat deployments were required by the even more secret Project 112 biological test program.

Operation Pacer IVY was an U.S. Air force operation that collected Agent Orange in South Vietnam and removed it in 1972 aboard the ship M/T TransPacific for storage on Johnston Atoll. The herbicides at Johnston Atoll were incinerated in four burns aboard the Dutch-owned waste incineration ship M/T Vulcanus during Operation Pacer HO during July to September 1977.

Some historical archives list the dates for Operation Red Hat as 1970–1977 which are similar dates to Operation Pacer IVY, Operation Pacer HO and Agent Orange operations.

At the direction of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an official statement was made by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Meyers to Congressman and Okinawa veteran Lane Evans in response to his investigation on the subject of whether Agent Orange was used on Okinawa

• "Records contain no information linking use or storage of Agent Orange or other herbicides in Okinawa." – General Richard Myers (USAF), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), November 3, 2004. This statement has been used to deny Veterans benefits

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response included a list of eighteen Agent Orange and Operation Red Hat document numbers and titles from August 1969 to March 1972. Released in response to Freedom of Information Act request citation number 0941781, of the 18 documents listed by the National Archives (NARA) only 6 have been declassified and released and of those 6, two contain dates that do not match with information provided by NARA.

A document that is not on the list of Agent Orange and Operation Red Hat documents provided by the Department of Defense and NARA is "Summary Report: Conference on Compatibility of RED HAT and Herbicide Orange with Readiness Activities on Johnston Island, Held at Headquarters Field Command, Defense Nuclear Agency, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, 14–16 November 1972." appears to be a summary of a 1972 meeting associated with Agent Orange and Operation Red Hat and aircraft operations.

According to a 2003 document from the United States Army Chemical Materials Agency entitled "An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll", "in 1972, the US Air Force also brought about 25,000 55-gallon (208L) drums of the chemical, Herbicide Orange (HO) to Johnston Island that originated from Vietnam and was stored on Okinawa." "An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll" was re-discovered by John Olin in 2012.

These documents are controversial because both publications can be found within in Department of Defense records. "An Ecological Assessment of Johnston Atoll" was found among records for Johnston Atoll and JACADS, the chemical weapon disposal facility on Johnston Atoll

• "The Department of Defense has searched and found no record that the aircraft or ships transporting Herbicide Orange to South Vietnam stopped at Okinawa on their way." – Maj. Neal Fisher, Deputy Director of Public Affairs for U.S. Forces in Japan, April 2012.

• "The U.S. Department of Defense said records do not indicate that Agent Orange was ever present at Okinawa. While we respect the veterans' service, the Department of Defense has found no records of Agent Orange being used, stored, disposed. or transported through Okinawa." – Major Catherine T. Wilkinson, spokeswoman, Department of Defense, June 2012.

Prior rulings and determinations of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), have found that herbicides including Agent Orange were present on Okinawa; however, prior Board decisions do not set a precedent for other rulings and there is no presumptive herbicide exposure for those serving on Okinawa. In addition to three successful awards, DVA records reveal that between 1996 and 2010, a further 132 veterans opened claims indicating that they had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving on Okinawa during the Vietnam War era.

• January 1998: "Credible evidence sustains a reasonable probability that the veteran was exposed to dioxins while serving in Okinawa." DVA concluded that that the veteran was exposed to herbicides while assigned to motor transport duties in Okinawa during 1961–1962 This ruling was the first recognition from a U.S. federal body that Agent Orange had been used on Okinawa."

• September 2008: "The veteran was exposed to herbicides used in the Vietnam conflict while serving on Okinawa in 1972 and 1973."

• November 2009: "The records pertaining to Operation Red Hat show herbicide agents were stored and then later disposed in Okinawa from August 1969 to March 1972..." Despite this finding, this claim was unsuccessful. The DVA decision states that the veteran had submitted "a summary of the use of Agent Orange in Operation Red Hat (Okinawa)" as evidence.

• July 2010: "...Cancer associated with herbicide exposure was substantiated by the information and evidence in VA possession".