An explosion at a Japanese regional airport has caused the cancellation of dozens of flights. After analysis, it appears to be an unexploded American bomb.
The images are frightening. Barely a minute after the passage of an airliner taking off from the tarmac of Miyazaki airport, video surveillance images show a large explosion occurring on the tarmac. Surveillance camera videos show a plume of earth rising about ten meters into the air, on the edge of an airport taxiway.
The explosion, which dug a crater several meters in diameter in the tarmac, was apparently caused by a “American-made 250 kg bomb“, said a spokesperson for the Self-Defense Forces (Japanese military) mine clearance team. No injuries were reported, but dozens of flights were canceled on Wednesday, affecting more than 3,400 passengers.
Additional U.S. unexploded ordnance was reportedly found in 2011 and 2021 at the airport, as well as at a nearby construction site in 2009.
Before dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski that killed 214,000 people there in August 1945, the American army also heavily bombed dozens of other Japanese cities and sites considered strategic.
Bombs from World War II
These bombings left hundreds of thousands dead, including an estimated 100,000 in Tokyo in a single night in March 1945. Over a twelve-month period ending last April, the Japanese military safely removed 2,348 unexploded ordnance, including 441 in the island department of Okinawa (south), according to the Self-Defense Forces.
The Okinawa archipelago was a major conflict zone during World War II, where around 200,000 people lost their lives, 60% of them civilians. More than 1,800 tons of unexploded bombs still litter the region. “Most of them are American bombs from World War II, but some are leftovers from the Japanese army” said a spokesperson for the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
plane airport bomb second world war japan
