A bomb dropped by American aircraft eight decades ago went off under a taxiway at Miyazaki Airport on the morning of October 2, 2024. Nobody was hurt. More than 80 flights were cancelled.
The blast came at about 8 a.m. local time at the airport on Kyushu island, in southwestern Japan. Video recorded by a nearby aviation school shows asphalt and debris thrown into the air. Local broadcaster MRT reported that an aircraft had taxied past the spot only moments earlier. DW, citing AFP, AP and Reuters, put the gap at just under a minute.
A crater in the taxiway
The explosion tore a hole in the taxiway. DW gave its size as about 7 meters across and 1 meter deep, and Business Times put it at roughly 23 feet wide and 3 feet deep. The airport shut at once.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi confirmed that more than 80 flights had been cancelled, hitting routes between Miyazaki and cities including Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka. DW counted more than 3,400 passengers affected. Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways were among the carriers involved. Hayashi said there was no risk of another explosion and that repairs were under way.
Crews fixed the damage overnight. Flights resumed on Thursday morning, October 3.
What the military found
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces bomb disposal team examined the site and concluded the blast came from a US-made 250 kilogram (550-pound) bomb, according to DW. Defense Ministry officials said the device was most likely dropped in a wartime raid. A Ground Self-Defense Force representative said it had probably sat buried for nearly 80 years.
The location made that plausible. Miyazaki Airport opened in 1943 as an Imperial Japanese Navy flight training field, and some pilots who flew from it went on kamikaze missions. It was a target for US air raids as the war turned against Japan. Defense Ministry officials told reporters that many unexploded American bombs have been dug up around the area. Earlier finds turned up at the airport and at a nearby building site.
Japan is full of such leftovers. Reuters reported that in fiscal year 2023 the Self-Defense Forces disposed of 2,348 bombs, weighing 41 tons in total. Hundreds of tons of unexploded ordnance remain in the ground across the country, often discovered during construction. Authorities in Miyazaki said they were looking into what set this bomb off.
Sources
- WWII Bomb Explosion at Japan Airport Creates Crater, Cancels 80 Flights Amid Ongoing Ordnance Threat
- Japan airport restarts flights after WWII bomb blast
