Eighty years ago, on March 5, 1945, Lt. Col. Wyss from U.S. Chemical Warfare Headquarters in Calcutta visited Ondal Advanced Chemical Park in West Bengal, India. The purpose of his visit was to reassess the stockpile of toxic chemical bombs then being maintained at Ondal by the 771st Chemical Depot Company (Aviation). Immediately after Wyss’s visit, the soldiers of the 771st began a major project to dispose of tens of thousands of chemical bombs that were judged to be either unneeded or unusable.

Long-secret documents from WWII show that the US Army’s 771st Chemical Depot Company buried thousands of M47A2 mustard-filled bombs at Ondal Airbase in British-ruled India. The 769th Chemical Depot Company helped bury hundreds of similar bombs at nearby Chakulia Airbase. Practically, legally and morally, the US should acknowledge its responsibility to remediate these burial sites.

By May 1944, the US had equipped four airbases near Kharagpur, India with 130 of America’s newest and largest bombers, the B-29 Superfortress….