60 years after WWII, Okinawa still rife with bombs

Sad to see, but that is price war brings to any country.

its their own fault.

The bombs, mortars, bullets and artillery shells that rained down on the island left 12,000 U.S. troops dead and killed as many as 250,000 Japanese, including many civilians who were caught in the crossfire.

This is worded badly. It should mention that the Americans bombed the place for 82 days. It didn't just rain bombs. Of the 250,000 Japanese killed, not "many" but app 150,000 were civilians. Thirty percent of the civilian population were killed by the bombing. App 1500 of them 150,000 were killed by Japanese soldiers.

aw

and 60 years after WWII there's stil Chinese that suffer from the chemical weapons left behind by the Japanese. War sucks for sure

This article should be in Japanese, not English. The bombs are the fault of the Japanese, who could have surrendered earlier.

A series of incidents this year—including the death last month of an American Marine involved in their disposal—have caused an uproar on Okinawa.

An uproar, really? The nightly news flashes a story everytime unexploded ordinance is found, and yet the streets of Naha remain as quiet as ever. No angry exchanges, no heated protests, no vitrolic demands for the Americans to leave...I'm not a fan of the heavy military presence on the island, but to call the situation an uproar is journalistic hyperbole at its worst.

Interesting how long bombs can remain dangerous.

Okinawa is probably riddled with unexploded ordinance, but 'rife'here sounds strange to me.

Rife with rumors/rumours perhaps...

Talk about an exageration...they make it sound like you see bombs everywhere you look. True enough that there are bombs, but running up on one is a rare occurrence. And that my friends is the truth.

This article should be in Japanese, not English. The bombs are the fault >of the Japanese, who could have surrendered earlier.

What a stupid comment. Fortunately the US Govct is both intelligent and morally correct enough to cooperate with the Japanese in the safe disposal of these bombs, even at the risking Amercan lives.

This article should be in Japanese, not English. The bombs are the fault of the Japanese, who could have surrendered earlier.

Albeit retrospective, this is the plain, simple truth.

This article is not about blame or fault but a problem, not just in Okinawa but in various parts of the world. At least to anyone who can read.

This article is not about blame or fault but a problem, not just in Okinawa but in various parts of the world. At least to anyone who can read.

Spot on! Some posters here seem to be under the thinking that the purpose of this article is to place blame. There are unexploded bombs located in so many parts of the world, and to place blame on one country (especially when it is that country in which the ordinance is located in), is pointless. What is being done to get rid of these bombs and such is what is more important. I remember watching an NHK documentary about a Japanese NPO which is doing a lot of work to safely get rid of unexploded cluster bombs in countries such as Vietnam, where these leftover ordinance still kill or maim people every year. After these bombs are safely exploded, Vietnamese kids come later to pick up the scrap metal to sell. They should set up an NPO in Okinawa to do the same thing, if they haven't already done so.

Don't know about Okinawa, but many years ago I had a bit of a scare while with the Australian Army in New Guinea (in the 1980s). It was late in the afternoon and one of my men was digging a weapons pit (trench). Anyway, he hit something solid with his entrenching tool (a rock) which started to sound distinctly metallic after he had hit is half a dozen times. On closer inspection it turned out to be a 250lb bomb (well the tail fin at least - we could also see the remains of a propeller fuse). Let's just say we set up camp somewhere else.

okinawa's lucky not to have been another hiroshima.

Agreed, there are some really off-the-wall comments here.

This little story is all about the work being done by some very brave men (Japanese & American) to remove left over ordnance from a battle field which in this case just happens to be Okinawa. That war ended 64 years ago & I doubt that there are any here who had first hand experience of it (This being about Okinawa the Marion may yet arrive though). So why are we reading so many bitter posts, why are there people here accusing Japan for these unexploded bombs? At this point in time there is no blame, there are only accidents waiting to happen. We can all read the history & believe from that that we understand what happened, but doing so is a mistake, because we cannot think in the minds of people of that time, there world was so very different than ours. Our world is so small & so fast, we think nothing of picking up a phone & talking to people on the other side of the planet. Television has for years shown us the world as it happens. That was not the world that they lived in & you cannot know to judge what their world was like to live in. The bitterness we read here was learned at the knee of old men, you no right or justification to keep it alive.

okinawa people must be carefull

OssanAmerica/Hotbox08> I too agree, blaming someone does not address the issue.

TokyoHustla> It is too easy to point the finger. And if this article were to be in Japanese, would it make a difference? Are YOU ready to do something?

sharky1> What is your point? Does it make bombs any less dangerous?

i agree, okinawans should be careful.