The asphalt went up like a fountain. A video shot by a nearby aviation school caught the moment on Wednesday, 2 October 2024, when an American bomb buried since the Second World War exploded under a taxiway at Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan.
Nobody was hurt. The blast left a crater about 7 meters across and 1 meter deep, according to Japanese television footage cited by the Associated Press. A Japanese transport ministry official put it at 23 feet wide and nearly three feet deep, in the middle of the taxiway beside the runway.
Eighty flights cancelled
The runway shut down. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said more than 80 flights had been cancelled by mid-afternoon, and later reports counted at least 87. JAL, ANA and other carriers linking Miyazaki with Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka were affected, according to the airport’s website. The Scotsman, citing CCTV, reported that the explosion came two minutes after a passenger plane passed the spot.
Bomb disposal specialists from the Ground Self-Defense Force and police investigators determined that the cause was a 500-pound U.S. bomb, most likely dropped in a wartime air raid. Hayashi said there was no danger of further explosions. Officials were still working out what set it off.
The airport said crews repaired the taxiway overnight and flights resumed Thursday morning.
A field with a history
Miyazaki Airport was built in 1943 as an Imperial Japanese Navy flight training field. According to the Miyazaki city website, hundreds of young kamikaze pilots took off from there on their last missions. A transport ministry official said several unexploded bombs had turned up at the airport before. Defense Ministry officials said a number of bombs dropped by U.S. forces had been dug up in the area.
The problem is not confined to one airfield. Hundreds of tons of unexploded wartime bombs remain buried around Japan, and construction crews sometimes unearth them, the AP reported.
Sources
- Buried WW2 bomb explodes on airport taxiway leaving 3ft deep crater
- American Bomb From WWII Explodes at Japanese Airport, Leaving Crater on Taxiway | NTD
