Show And Tell

Two schoolboys in Okinawa found an unexploded bomb from World War 2 and brought it into their school as study material. It turned out to be safe as the fuse was no longer intact, but it was still a pretty scary moment for the teachers.

The most surprising aspect of the linked article is the statement that in just two weeks this month, the SDF unearthed and disposed of 445 unexploded WW2 bombs in Okinawa. The Americans really took that place to task. For those of you who don't know, Okinawa was a major strategic field in the war between America and Japan, with one of the largest battles being held there in which almost 200,000 Japanese people died. It was going to be the base from which the Americans launched their invasion of Japan, but soon after they won it they decided to just nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the short term, nuking the two cities was a horrific and inhuman thing to do, but in the long term it probably saved a lot of lives that would undoubtedly have been lost in the defence of a ground-invasion.

As the linked article states, earlier this month a man had part of his face blown off when a water-pipe he was repairing disturbed a WW2 bomb. This sort of thing shouldn't be happening. It's too tragic for words.