The Weapons Nobody Wants

GB and VX are colorless, odorless nerve gases that can kill or incapacitate humans within seconds. Last year President Nixon included such gases in his ban on the U.S.'s "first use" of chemical and biological weapons. But he is obviously determined to retain stockpiles big enough to counter the Russians, who are well armed with the weapons. In fact, thousands of tons of nerve gas, packed in bombs, rockets or artillery shells, are still secretly stockpiled at U.S. bases round the globe. And that fact alone is bound to cause an uproar whenever civilians living near a base hear that gases are stored there.

Sniffing Distance. A year ago, Okinawans were incensed by the news that 23 American soldiers and one civilian had been hospitalized after a nerve-gas "accident" at the U.S. Kadena airbase near Koza. The Okinawans, who had unknowingly lived within sniffing distance of the chemical munitions for eight years, demanded immediate removal. But last week, after being promised that the weapons would go, they still had 13,000 tons of the stuff on the island.

The Pentagon had actually worked out a detailed plan to remove the chemical munitions at a cost of $6,000,000. Packed in special metal containers, the weapons were to be shipped in late May on five transports to Bangor, Wash. They would then be loaded on twelve specially equipped trains and finally stored at the Umatilla Army Depot in Hermiston, Ore., where the local townspeople made no objections.

Despite the Pentagon's painstaking precautions, Oregon Governor Tom McCall was aghast. Unlike the Okinawans, he recognized that transporting the nerve gas is far more dangerous than storing it. Citizen protest in Washington and Oregon was quick and vehement: a petition to stop the shipment collected 200,000 signatures; various groups staged "die-ins" to simulate the effects of the gas. As a last-ditch effort, McCall and Governor Daniel J. Evans of Washington sued to block the shipment in U.S. district court. Late last month, President Nixon canceled the plan.

Inconveniences. "A very happy solution," said Oregon's Senator Mark O. Hatfield. But to Okinawans, it was no such thing. It is "unforgivable," Okinawan officials wired Nixon last week, "to continue to subject the Okinawan people to dangers of the gas because of internal inconveniences in the U.S." Waving death's-head placards, 5,000 angry Okinawans demonstrated outside the U.S. base.

The problem is what to do with the weapons. The U.S. has facilities in Maryland and Colorado where chemical munitions can be safely disassembled and detoxified or incinerated. But Okinawa lacks such facilities--and wants none. Moreover, the gases cannot be dumped into the sea; if they escaped their containers, cubic miles of ocean might be contaminated.

Where can the gas be stored out of sight and out of mind? Perhaps in Guam, or one of Micronesia's 2,000 uninhabited islands. But the most likely repository appeared to be the half-phased-out U.S. Navy base on Alaska's remote Kodiak Island. Reaction to the idea in Kodiak (pop. 3,500) has been strangely mixed. With the gas the naval base would get a new lease on life, so to speak, and provide regular jobs for some of the island's seasonally unemployed workers. But, says Kodiak Mayor Pete Resoff, "it's like getting a Christmas present of a sack full of rattlesnakes." Adds Alaska Governor Keith Miller: "I will oppose the plan with every means at my disposal."

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