Workers at a school in Solomon Islands discovered a buried stockpile of the second world war munitions as they “dug a hole for sewage”, police said.
More than 200 rust-caked projectiles – which once belonged to US troops – have been dug up and removed after they were found near a school staff member’s house, the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force said.
Japan and the United States fought viciously to control Solomon Islands at the height of the second world war, littering the South Pacific archipelago with unexploded ordnance – or UXOs – that still take lives today.
I bet that there’s other UXO there there. Looking at Google Maps, St. Nicholas High School is on the beach, and about 1000 feet east of the Mataniko River. The mouth of that river was the site of a considerable amount of fighting between Japanese and American forces at Guadalcanal. After the Americans managed to defend the initial Lunga Point beachhead, which didn’t reach that far west, was maybe a mile to the east of that, that geographical feature was the next spot to establish a line at.
Video documentary talking about some of the land warfare at that point, with time offset for the start of hostilities relating to the area (using the spelling “Matanikau” rather than “Mataniko”):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI4eNk69E8Q&start=4920
I’d be really surprised if this didn’t happen constantly on Pacific islands that saw a lot of fighting.