500-Pound World War II Bomb Unexpectedly Explodes At Airport In Japan

History is alive, and sometimes it can even be potentially lethal. An unexploded bomb dropped by the United States on Japan during World War II detonated unexpectedly on Wednesday after laying dormant for over 75 years.

The 500-pound bomb was embedded in the ground under a taxiway at Miyazaki Airport in southwest Japan. The airport’s CCTV cameras captured the blast. While a civilian airport today, the site opened as a pilot training base for the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1943 and became a kamikaze base in 1945.

The plane taxied near the buried bomb only two minutes before it exploded, but no one was injured in the blast, USA Today reports. The explosion created a 23-foot-wide crater and canceled 87 flights as the incident was dealt with. A bomb disposal team from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force identified the explosive device. However, it’s unclear why the bomb detonated after all this time. The airport is expected to reopen on Thursday with the crater filled.

The Japanese military stated it disposed of 2,348 bombs across the 2023 fiscal year, according to Reuters. Wednesday’s blast was nowhere near the first time that unexplored ordinance was discovered around Miyazaki Airport. There are so many dormant bombs from World War I in historic war zones in Belgium and France that farmers organize an annual collection called a “récolte de fer” or iron harvest.