He has written extensively about Okinawa during the Vietnam War and the history of the island’s human rights movement. His latest work can be read at http://www.jonmitchellinjapan.com. Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed South Vietnam with approximately 76 million liters of defoliants -- including Agent Orange -- in an attempt to rob its enemies of crops and jungle hiding places. The Pentagon assured South Vietnamese residents and its own troops who handled these chemicals that they were harmless to human health. But in reality they contained a witches’ brew of poisonous substances including arsenic and dioxin -- a substance described by the World Health Organization as “highly toxic and [that] can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.”