Jon Mitchell is a British journalist and author based in Japan. In 2015, he was awarded the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan's Freedom of the Press Lifetime Achievement Award for his investigations into human rights issues on Okinawa. His research has featured in reports for the US Congress and been the focus of debate in the Japanese parliament. Mitchell is the author of two Japanese books about military contamination - Tsuiseki: Okinawa no Karehazai (2014) and Tsuiseki: Nichibei Chiikyoutei to Kichi Kougai (2018) and coauthor of Japan's first book on the dangers of PFAS, Eien no Kagaku Busshitsu: Mizu no PFAS Osen (2020). Mitchell’s English-language book, Poisoning the Pacific, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in October 2020. It catalogs the environmental damage caused by military operations on Okinawa, mainland Japan, the Marshall Islands and the US territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Johnston Atoll; Noam Chomsky describes the book as “an eloquent call to bring this tragedy to an end.”
In 2019, Okinawa International University's library made public the Jon Mitchell Collection a 5500-page database of reports obtained via the US Freedom of Information Act from the CIA, DoD and State Department. The documents catalog the environmental impact of military operations on Okinawa, CIA attempts to influence public opinion and discriminatory USMC orientation lectures.
Mitchell reports as a special correspondent for Okinawa Times. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal associate and visiting researcher at the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo.
