Chas Henry Checks In With DCRTV

Longtime Washington newsman Chas Henry reached out to DCRTV to let readers know what he has been up to. Chas is a familiar name in the area. He’s been a television reporter with NewsChannel 8 and ABC7, a radio news anchor with WTOP, WNEW and Westwood One, and the host of the nationally syndicated Eye on Veterans programs for CBS News Radio.

Chas tells us his latest work is not on the air but he just released Fuji Fire: Sifting Ashes of a Forgotten U. S. Marine Corps Tragedy. The book examines a largely overlooked disaster at Camp Fuji in Japan in 1979, when the remnants of the largest recorded tropical cyclone triggered a massive fuel spill. More than 5,000 gallons of gasoline washed into corrugated steel huts occupied by Marines and Sailors. Open flame kerosene heaters ignited flash fires that tore through the camp during the violent storm.

The tragedy injured seventy three service members with fifty four suffering burns and claimed the lives of thirteen. The Marine Corps commandant at the time called it the most serious peacetime disaster he had seen in his decades of service. But only sixteen days later global attention shifted to the embassy crisis in Iran, and the story faded from public memory. Drawing on a four year investigation across two continents, Chas reconstructs the chain of natural and human factors that led to the fire, the massive American and Japanese response and the lasting impact on those who survived. Chas says he hopes the book finally gives the event the recognition it has long deserved.