Operation Red Hat: Chemical weapons and the Pentagon smokescreen on Okinawa :: JapanFocus:
Tim Gravely, one of the soldiers who helped to load the ships at Ten Gan Pier, still well remembers the sense of danger surrounding the project.
“Just in case there was a leak, they gave us large hypodermic needles to wear on our belts. We were supposed to hit ourselves on the leg and the needle would shoot out, injecting medicine,” he said in a recent interview.
The syringes probably contained atropine, an antidote to nerve gas, and Gravely came close to using it on Aug. 25, 1971, when a crane dropped 15 chemical rockets into a ship’s hold.
“Five or six guys jumped on my forklift and we drove off as fast as it would go to get off the pier. I didn’t want to have to use those needles because they were so nasty looking,” Gravely recalls.
