False Alarm event in Japan on Sat 19th October 2024

Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan on Sunday resumed operations after determining that a magnetic reaction possibly indicating the presence of an unexploded World War II bomb around a taxiway was caused instead by a large amount of iron sand. Japan Airlines canceled some of its flights Saturday night ahead of work to excavate the taxiway early Sunday. A magnetic survey had appeared to find an object 1.6 meters below the ground near the location where a wartime bomb had exploded on Oct. 2. The transport ministry's local office said Saturday it found the concerning reading after surveying the area of the taxiway where the 250-kilogram bomb had exploded. No one was injured in the explosion, but it left asphalt fragments scattered over a radius of some 200 meters, including the runway. Formerly an air base of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the airport has seen two unexploded bombs unearthed in recent years, in 2011 and 2021.