Photo/Illutration A buried bomb explodes at Miyazaki Airport on Oct. 2. (Provided by Civil Aviation College)

MIYAZAKI--A Defense Ministry study has found that even greater damage may have been inflicted if all the explosives in a bomb buried for decades under Miyazaki Airport had exploded. 

An oval crater measuring 7 meters long and a meter deep was created on Oct. 2 on a taxiway when a 250-kilogram bomb dropped by the U.S. military during World War II suddenly exploded.

The ministry determined that the buried ordnance was a delayed detonation bomb that for some unknown reason exploded at around 8 a.m. that morning.

The remains of undetonated explosives were found along with fragments of the bomb during the ministry study.

The structure of the fragments led researchers to conclude the time bomb was set to detonate between an hour to several days after hitting the ground.

The ministry did not try to pinpoint the exact cause of the explosion, pointing to various factors that may have led to the detonation.

Photos were taken soon after the explosion by passers-by and experts said its scale appeared to be smaller than what would be expected from a 250-kg bomb.

Two minutes before the explosion, a commercial jet with passengers aboard passed the taxiway where the bomb exploded.

“A major disaster might have been caused if the bomb fully detonated while a plane passed nearby,” said Tetsuya Inada, 53, a local historian.

Undetonated bombs have been discovered around Miyazaki Airport in the past, including a 1-ton bomb buried under the parking apron found in 2021.

Inada said passengers in the terminal building might have been injured if a bomb of that size had actually detonated.

Miyazaki Airport’s predecessor, Akae airfield, was built by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1943 and was targeted by Allied bombing runs. 

According to U.S. military records, about 2,300 bombs were dropped in a one-month period from mid-April 1945 on the naval airfield.

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