October 18, 2020

A bag of 170 bullets was recently found half-buried in a publicly-owned woodland in Okinawa which used to be a U.S. military training field until 1993. In the same area, a lot of trash, believed to have been left by the U.S. military, was also found.

The site where the 170 bullets were discovered was only 20-30 meters away from a prefectural road in the national forest in Higashi Village. The jute bag was ripped and some ammunition was exposed.

Miyagi Akino, a butterfly researcher who initially came across the bullets, on October 16 took Japanese Communist Party member of the Higashi Village Assembly Isa Masatsugu to the site. Isa then called the police and the bag was taken away by the police.

Miyagi had also discovered other trash in the woods, such as U.S.-made empty bottles, tableware, batteries, used flares, and an unexploded hand grenade. She shared this information with Isa.

Concerning the abandoned waste, Isa said, “It is terrible. It is irresponsible of the U.S. military to have returned the former training site to Japan without cleaning up the trash. The Japanese and U.S. governments should remove the discarded trash from the forest.”

Past related article:
> Large amount of trash found left in former US military training field in Okinawa [October 3, 2020]