By Daily Caller (World News) | Created at 2024-10-02 23:07:13 | Updated at 2024-10-04 15:29:51
1 day ago
October 02, 2024 6:54 PM ET
A dormant U.S.-made World War II-era bomb exploded Wednesday morning at an airport in southwestern Japan, prompting a runway closure and multiple flight cancelations, according to reports.
The shell exploded without warning on a taxiway at Miyazaki Airport at about 8 a.m., leaving a crater nearly 23 feet wide and just over three feet deep, Japan’s Kyodo News reported.
The Japanese army’s explosive ordnance disposal unit investigated the site, the outlet added. No injuries were reported. Local firefighters and police also responded, and the police issued a localized evacuation order.
A video of the explosion obtained by Kyodo News from a nearby aviation college shows black debris shooting skyward and a damaged portion of the tarmac. An airplane had passed nearby only two minutes before, the outlet reported.
The bomb was a U.S.-made weapon, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo, according to Kyodo News.
Weighing about 500 pounds, the bomb had been lying buried beneath the taxiway, according to CBS News. (RELATED: Extreme Drought Reveals Enormous Unexploded WWII Munition In Riverbed)
Airport authorities canceled over 80 flights but there was no threat of a second explosion and the airport could resume operations Thursday morning, Hayashi reportedly added.
Airline counters at the airport had to deal with long lines of travelers. “I had switched to another flight but that too has been canceled, so I talked with my company and decided to extend my stay,” Shun Akahori, a businessperson from Osaka, told Kyodo News.
Miyazaki Airport was formerly an air base of the Imperial Japanese Navy, from which “kamikaze”—Japanese for “divine wind”—or suicide attack pilots took off during World War II, Kyodo News revealed.
Two dud shells were found at the airport in 2011 and another in 2021, indicating a history of the presence of unexploded World War II-era bombs at the airport.
Japan still discovers unexploded bombs from intense airstrikes on it during the 1939–1945 war, Reuters reported. The Japanese Armed Forces reportedly disposed of 2,348 bombs weighing about 41.3 tons during fiscal year 2023.
