TOKYO (AFP) — A Japanese worker was severely injured Wednesday by a World War II bomb in Okinawa, which witnessed the Pacific war's fiercest battle nearly 64 years ago, officials said.
Jun Kohagura, 25, was working on an underground water pipe on the subtropical island when the bomb went off, seriously injuring him in the face.
"He was brought to hospital where he remains conscious. But his condition is not good as his injuries are so terrible that a piece of his flesh was found on the ground at the scene," fire department official Atsushi Kakazu said.
The explosion was strong enough to shatter the glass of a nearby nursing home in the city of Itowan. A 72-year-old man was lightly injured but did not need hospital care, the fire department said.
Leftover bombs are periodically found across Japan, even in highly developed Tokyo, but they rarely cause injuries.
Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war, with US forces unleashing an 83-day air and amphibious assault dubbed by locals the "Typhoon of Steel." Some 190,000 Japanese died, half of them Okinawan civilians.
An estimated 10,000 tonnes of unexploded munition were left in Okinawa after the war. About 4,500 tonnes remained by the time the United States returned Okinawa to Japan in 1972.
Since then, Japan's armed forces have removed another 1,500 tonnes but it is expected to take 80 years or more to remove remaining dud bombs, Okinawa-based military spokesman Masatomo Takazato said.
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