YIKES

WATCH: U.S-Made Bomb Explodes Near Airport Runway

Fire officials called to the scene arrived to a huge sinkhole—22 by 13 feet around and 3 feet deep.

A 500-pound, U.S.-made bomb exploded below the taxiway of Japan’s Miyazaki Airport on Wednesday, sources with the Japanese Armed Forces confirmed to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Fire officials in Miyazaki, a city on the island of Kyushu, were called to the scene shortly after 8 a.m. local time and arrived to discover a huge sinkhole—22 by 13 feet around and 3 feet deep. Flights bound for the airport were rerouted and the runway closed until at least 9:30 p.m. Unexploded bombs—believed to have been dropped by the U.S. military during World War II—have previously been found at Miyazaki Airport. In 2021, a one-ton bomb was discovered when workers were replacing asphalt on the airport’s tarmac and, in 2011, workers found two bombs near the runway while performing maintenance work. The Asahi Shimbun acquired CCTV footage showing the explosion, as well as a helicopter view of the aftermath.