16,000 Tokyo residents evacuated for disposal of WW2 bomb
A gutsy cameraman films the defusing of an WW2-era American bomb:
About 16,000 people in Chofu, western Tokyo, were evacuated Sunday while an unexploded bomb believed to have been dropped by the U.S. during World War II was removed from near the Keio Line.
Ground Self-Defense Force personnel began the work at 9:30 a.m. and removed the fuse from the dud in a two-hour operation. The Chofu Municipal Government declared the area safe and called off the alert.
The city ordered people living within a radius of about 500 meters around the site to evacuate and train services between Chofu and Tsutsujigaoka stations on the Keio Line were suspended for about three hours.
The 180-cm-long, 60-cm-diameter weapon, believed to be a 1-ton bomb dropped from a U.S. B-29 bomber that crashed in April 1945, was found by construction workers in March at a private residential site along the railway tracks.
