Tokyo: Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan resumed near-normal operations, one day after a blast left a hole of about seven meters wide in a taxiway. After the runway was re-opened at 7.40 am, a Japan Airlines plane to Fukuoka departed on the first flight since the airport was shut for safety checks on Wednesday.
An unexploded US bomb from World War II that had been buried at the airport exploded Wednesday, creating an oval-shaped hole measuring about seven meters long, four meters wide and one meter deep on asphalt pavement near the taxiway, the airport office said.
A total of 87 flights to and from the airport were cancelled as of 2 pm local time as the runway was closed for the day, Japanese officials said. No one was hurt, and there were no aircraft nearby when the bomb exploded at Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan, Land and Transport Ministry officials said.
An investigation by the Self-Defense Forces and police confirmed the explosion was caused by a 500-pound US bomb and there was no further danger. That type of bomb was reportedly dropped by US forces during the war. Officials were determining what caused its sudden detonation.
A video recorded by a nearby aviation school showed the blast spewing pieces of asphalt into the air like a fountain. Videos broadcast on Japanese television showed a crater in the taxiway reportedly about seven meters (yards) in diameter and one meter (3 feet) deep.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said more than 80 flights had been cancelled at the airport as of midafternoon Wednesday. The airport said the taxiway damage was repaired overnight and flights resumed Thursday morning.
Miyazaki Airport was built in 1943 as a former Imperial Japanese Navy flight training field from which some pilots took off on suicide attack missions. Several unexploded bombs dropped by the US military during World War II have been unearthed in the area, Defense Ministry officials said.
Hundreds of tonnes of unexploded bombs from the war remain buried around Japan and are sometimes dug up at construction sites.
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