HONOLULU (CN) — When jet fuel seeped into the tap water at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in 2021, thousands of military families bathed in it, cooked with it, and gave it to their children to drink. Now, the U.S. government is arguing those actions count as happening during the course of military service.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi in Honolulu, Hawaii, presided over a hearing on a motion to dismiss one of several lawsuits arising from the 2021 Red Hill water contamination disaster — this one brought by active-duty service members.
The government says that when service members were cooking, bathing, and washing baby bottles with jet-fuel-contaminated water in their own homes, they were performing military duties…