A 9-year-old boy found a hand grenade in a rice field in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, on Monday at around 3:40 p.m., and then took it home. The boy's father discovered the object around two hours later and handed it in to a local police station.
Police then cordoned off the area for 50 meters while the bomb squad came to collect it.
Police said the grenade was around 10 cm long, 5 cm wide, shaped like a rugby ball and covered in mud. The boy was quoted by police as saying: "I found it next to a rice field where a friend and I were playing. I wasn't scared because I pretty sure it wouldn't blow up. For its size, it felt quite heavy."
Fukuoka has been the scene of numerous disputes between rival organized crime gangs, and there have been cases in which hand grenades were used as weapons. According to police, however, there are no yakuza gang headquarters near where the grenade was found, so there is a very slim chance of yakuza involvement.
© Compiled from news reports
19 Comments
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gogogo
Morons, of course it is the Yaks, who else throws grenades into rice fields?
combinibento
The farmer was just trying to make fried rice a little quicker?
ihavegreatlegs
Was it a Japanese hand grenade or shall we blame the Americans
Dubya
Yaks? Japanese NEVER refer to the yakuza as "yaks."
ninjastar
Only thing I ever found as a kid was a ninja star. A grenade would have been so much cooler, I think.
gogogo
Dudya: What's your point?
Zenny11
Just open it up and check the tiny metal tags inside the explosives this will give country and manufacturer origin.
Could be a left-over from a previous war.
manfromamerica
Is there a grenade company nearby? It could have come from there.
Okinawamike
Maybe it's a pineapple.
Homerun2
Pin in it or no?
Tom DeMicke
I would think a 9-year old boy would know better than to just pick it up and take it home.
proxy
It was rusty so it had been there for awhile.
Zenny11
Agree with Typhoon_Tom as does my 10yr old son.
Homerun2 no pin in they are lucky if it is a dud but a 3 seconds wait-time till tell aftre putting it down. ;)
Zenny11
will tell after
worried
You would hope that a 9 year old boy would know better than to pick it up and take it home! I bet his parents were delighted. Ah well, he is safe and sound, no harm done, and I bet his friends were impressed.
borscht
Interesting logic. So that means if the police find a truckload of heroin at a shopping mall but no yakuza headquarters are nearby then the heroin couldn't possibly belong to the yakuza but to the owners of the shopping mall? Scary.
bdiego
Yup, there is a special rule that hand grenades may only be used near Yakuza headquarters. The gansters take that rule very seriously!
WTSherman1864
Probably the greatest adventure of the boy's lifetime!
Peaceful_Man
Don't panic, they are now saying that it was a toy. A big fuss over nothing