diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 5b912567b21..e82ccb53d29 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -169,6 +169,9 @@ Release 0.23.2 - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-8131. FsShell put doesn't correctly handle a non-existent dir
     (Daryn Sharp via bobby)
 
+    HADOOP-8123. Use java.home rather than env.JAVA_HOME for java in the
+    project. (Jonathan Eagles via acmurthy) 
+
 Release 0.23.1 - 2012-02-17 
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-project/pom.xml b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
index 8b076636479..4b11d38c09e 100644
--- a/hadoop-project/pom.xml
+++ b/hadoop-project/pom.xml
@@ -889,7 +889,7 @@
           <artifactId>jdk.tools</artifactId>
           <version>1.6</version>
           <scope>system</scope>
-          <systemPath>${env.JAVA_HOME}/lib/tools.jar</systemPath>
+          <systemPath>${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar</systemPath>
         </dependency>
       </dependencies>
     </profile>