Quee means “white” or “civilized,” while Zahn translates to “leave this place.”[7] Similar displacement occurred in parts of Division 22, where residents had to move or risk being forced out by controlled burns.

[8] In 1929, the Liberian legislature received a complaint from King Maya Gedebeo of Twansiebo that, in addition to destroying nine towns in the area, the Firestone project made people "choose between forced labor and emigration.

As early as May 1925 British officials in Monrovia informed their superiors in London of how unfeasible these numbers were and warned that "natives would soon be converted into wage-slaves..."[4] The Liberian government supplied men to create and staff the plantations by giving local chieftains quotas for workers that were impossibly high to meet.

[4] As a part of the agreement with Firestone, the Liberian government was given funding to pay the foreign debts it had incurred,[1] and to develop a harbor necessary for rubber exportation.

Firestone asked the U.S. government to send a warship to Monrovia to enforce the debt payment, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected the "gunboat diplomacy".

[4] In the period between 1926 and 1946 Christine Whyte concluded that:"The collusion between Firestone and government officials to keep wages low and coerce workers onto the plantations was at best substantially overlooked, at worst regarded as a form of 'development' in itself.

"[17] Greene also highlights the Firestone plantation hierarchy: "at the end of several hours’ rough driving from the capital, live the Firestone men in houses containing shower baths and running water and electric light, with a wireless station, tennis courts and a bathing pool, and a new neat hospital in the middle of plantations which smell all the day through of latex, as it drips into little cups tied beneath incisions in the trunks.

They, more than the English or the French, are the official Enemy, and no story of whipping post, smuggled arms or burnt villages is too wild to be circulated and believed among Liberians of both parties.

[19] The Smithsonian Institution Archives have digitized and made Lucile Quarry Mann's "Diary: Firestone Expedition to Liberia, 1940 (February 15 – August 8, 1940)" detailing the trip available online.

[23] The exact nature of Firestone's activities in the plantation between 1990 and 1997 is unclear, the government's official stance was that they were able to take it back within a few months,[23] while media reports say that it was not operational until late 1994.

In the latter chronicle, republished in a 2001 collection of essays by HarperCollins, Johnson is held prisoner by Taylor on the Firestone plantation, describing it, thus: "a realm of tall rubber trees.

Cool suffused light and perfect little golf–course gravel roads, the Firestone rubber plantation, one million acres of tall slender trees.

"[26] Johnson provides first–hand details of an aerial attack upon Firestone's Harbel village, likely bombed by Economic Community Cease–Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) of the ECOWAS as had already been perpetrated in November of 1992.

[24] By October 2008, it was operating at half the capacity, withholding further investments until the government finally agreed to give the company a lenient tax status.

[30] Workers specifically claim that Firestone's high daily quotas force them to employ their own children, subjecting them to grueling and dangerous work conditions.

UNMIL found that several factors contribute to the occurrence of child labor on Firestone plantations: pressure to meet company quotas, incentive to support the family financially, and lack of access to basic education.

[30] In November 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund, representing "tappers" (workers who extract latex from rubber trees) on the Liberian plantation, filed an Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) case in U.S. District Court in California against Bridgestone (parent company owning Firestone), alleging "forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery", on the Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia.

As law professor Jessica Bergman Asbridge has noted, the ATCA is limited to "the worst forms of child labor", whereas this case was also demanding Firestone to reduce its quotas for workers so that they would not have to bring their children to comply.

Still, Bergman suspectcs that this case represents a step in a longer process of the ACTA's ability to encourage multinational corporations (like Firestone) to improve their child labor practices.

UNMIL found that several factors contribute to the occurrence of child labor on Firestone plantations: pressure to meet company quotas, incentive to support the family financially, and lack of access to basic education.

[30] In response to the accusations of child labor and poor housing in the UN report, Dan Adomitis, President of Firestone Natural Rubber Company Liberia, stated: Well, in addition to the devastation that 15 years of civil war has caused, I think you need to understand another point–during the 2003 fighting, we had thousands of refugees come to Harbel for the safety that it provided.

[40] Monoculture agriculture, as practiced on the Firestone Plantations, often leads to a reduction in biological diversity, altering the environment and facilitating the spread of insects and disease.

During periods of heightened rubber demand, such as the Second World War, Firestone workers implemented intensive tapping techniques that proved particularly detrimental to the health of the trees.

The presence of uniform waterways and walking paths provided ideal conditions for the unchecked expansion of the black fly, Simulium yahense, and the parasitic worm, Onchocerca volvulus.

In 2005, residents living near Firestone Plantations alleged that chemical runoff from rubber production flowed into the Farmington River and prevented local use.

In 2005, residents living near Firestone Plantations alleged that chemical runoff from rubber production flowed into the Farmington River and prevented local use.