Jon Mitchell (journalist)

Jon Mitchell (born 1974 in Swansea, Wales) is a Welsh journalist and author residing in Yokohama, Japan. Mitchell has written widely about Okinawa, especially on issues created by the ongoing presence of the United States Armed Forces. He was awarded the inaugural Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan's Freedom of the Press Lifetime Achievement Award for this work in 2015.

Mitchell is a visiting researcher at the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University. He is a regular contributor for The Japan Times and an associate and contributing editor to The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. He is a special correspondent for the Okinawa Times. Investigative journalism and human interest stories on environmental contamination and the impact of military herbicides such as Agent Orange on Okinawa are frequent subjects of his writing. His Japanese language book Tsuiseki: Okinawa no Karehazai (Chasing Agent Orange on Okinawa) was published in November 2014.

• The British media nicknamed him the "Bard of a Broken Country" for the poems he wrote after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The poems were gathered in a booklet called March and After and sold to support survivors of the disaster.
• Defoliated Island, a TV documentary about Mitchell's investigation into the contamination from the alleged usage of military herbicides in Japan, was winner of a 2012 award for excellence from the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan.
• Freedom of the Press Lifetime Achievement Award from the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (2015)

• "Bard of a Broken Country". walesonline.co.uk. Wales Online. 27 March 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2016. 
• Kosaka, Kris (9 October 2011). "Hymns for Human Potential". japantimes.co.jp. The Japan Times. Retrieved 8 August 2016. 
• McGlinchey, Afric (7 November 2011). "'March and After' by Jon Mitchell". sabotagereviews.com. Sabotage Reviews. Retrieved 8 August 2016. 
• Mitchell, Jon (18 March 2014). "Military Contamination on Okinawa: PCBs and Agent Orange at Kadena Air Base". apjjf.org. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (Volume 12, Issue 12, Number 1, Mar 2014). Retrieved 9 August 2016. 
• "Lifetime award for journalist who started career with school paper at Olchfa in Swansea". southwales-eveningpost.co.uk. South Wales Evening Post. 13 May 2015. Retrieved 9 August 2016.