Why Casualties From Some Wars Occur Decades After The War Ended

The Curse Of Okinawa -- Strategy Page

October 25, 2008: Yet another unexploded World War II warhead was recently found inside the U.S. Kadena air base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Bomb disposal experts removed the five inch (127mm) aircraft rocket to where it could be destroyed. Okinawa was the scene of a major battle during World War II, where millions of shells, rockets and bombs were used as invading Americans fought Japanese defenders. Most of the of the buildings on the island were destroyed by these explosive devices. But many of those explosives did not go off, and were buried in the rubble and earth. Since then, every few years, more are uncovered. The recent find was near one of the base entry gates, a hundred meters from a residential neighborhood. Everything in the area was shut down for half a day, as bomb disposal teams came in to disarm the weapon and haul it away.

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My Comment: When I visited/lived in China in 1988, I visited a quarry that was used in the manufacturing of tombstones. When there, I learned how the quarry was shut down a few months ago when a cache of Japanese munitions from the 1930s was found. It was only through luck that this cache had not exploded. If it had, it would have killed scores of workers.

It appears that for munitions to be deactivated, we are talking about a century or two for corrosion and decomposition to occur. This tells me that even though the Iraq war is winding down, casualties from unexploded ordinances will still occur well into the 22nd century.