In 1945, the United States Proposed Dumping Weed Killer on Japan
The Army created at least nine potential weapons containing phenoxyacetics. Of the options, LN-8 performed best in tests and went into mass production.
In May, President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima reignited discussions of whether the United States actually needed to drop atomic bombs to force Japan to surrender at the end of World War II. What these debates didn’t touch on was that the U.S. military prepared to use other horrifying tactics, including starvation induced by chemical weapons.
In April 1944, the U.S. Army started cooking up special chemical compounds to destroy or otherwise damage crops. A year later, the ground combat branch was hard at work getting the weapons ready for a possible campaign on the Japanese home islands.