Collection is open for research.
Gift of Alystra Hill, July 2023 (RL2023-033).
In 1970, the U.S. military planned to move nerve gas stored in Okinawa, Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot west of Hermiston, Oregon, transporting the shipments through Washington State. The planned move was part of a program, named "Operation Red Hat," to better secure chemical weapons in the possession of the armed forces. Although Oregon Governor Tom McCall initially approved the shipment, he reversed his decision the next day, when his adviser Ron Schmidt showed him research indicating that the amount of nerve gas that would be shipped was sufficient to kill double the world's current population. McCall gathered 62,000 signatures on a petition opposing the plan and personally delivered it to the White House. Additionally, a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Portland asking for an injunction against the planned shipment. In late March 1970, the group People Against Nerve Gas (P.A.N.G.) formed to support the lawsuit, with Portland State College (later Portland State University) chemistry professor Gordon L. Kilgour as its chair.
The Nixon administration ignored these and other actions and statements protesting the planned shipment throughout March and April 1970. Finally, U.S. Senator for Washington Henry "Scoop" Jackson, fearing that the issue would affect his popularity, persuaded Nixon to cancel the shipment in late May. After considering a site in Alaska, the military ultimately chose to ship the nerve gas to Johnston Atoll, southwest of Oahu.
Sources: Articles in the Oregonian, March-June 1970; "Operation Red Hat," by Mark Henkels, Oregon Encyclopedia,
People Against Nerve Gas papers, Coll 971, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Other collections at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library that relate to the nerve gas shipment controversy include: the Evelyn Murray papers, Mss 2924; the Politics collection, Mss 1513; and a vertical file, Nerve gas controversy, 1970.
The collection consists of materials either produced or compiled by Gordon L. Kilgour in relation to his work as chair of the organization People Against Nerve Gas (P.A.N.G.), an organization that protested the proposed shipment of nerve gas from Okinawa, Japan, to Oregon. Materials include correspondence written or forwarded to Kilgour or written to P.A.N.G. as an organization; copies and drafts of correspondence by Kilgour; and fact sheets, petitions, statements, records, and ephemera. The correspondence includes letters from Oregon Governor Tom McCall and U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, as well as from people writing on behalf of U.S. President Richard Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. There are copies of statements by Tom McCall and letters that McCall and Multnomah County Commissioner Donald E. Clark wrote to U.S. government officials. Some of the fact sheets and petition forms in the collection, along with proposed legislation, were produced by the Eugene, Oregon, chapter of P.A.N.G. and its chair, Peter H. von Hippel. Records in the collection include financial records and ephemera; notes for meetings and events; lists of members; mailing lists; Kilgour's personal notes; and notes relating to phone calls, correspondence, and visitors to Kilgour's office that he had missed. Ephemera in the collection consists of flyers advertising protests or describing actions citizens could take, and the lyrics to a protest song written by Don Waggoner. The collection also holds some published materials about nerve gas and newspaper clippings about the proposed shipment, as well as one publication and a few clippings about nerve gas that significantly postdate the shipment's cancellation.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.