World War II bomb provokes evacuations

Police disarmed the US-made machine.

Hundreds of people were evacuated Friday in Hong Kong after a World War II bomb was discovered on a construction site, police said. This is the third find of its kind this year.The police disarmed the US-made machine after setting up a security perimeter and evacuated about 1,200 people from stores, restaurants and offices in Wanchai, the ultra-busy business district of the former British colony.The 450-kilogram device was discovered Thursday on a construction site for a new metro station, where two bombs of the same model were found in January. The deminers took 20 hours to defuse it."The two previous bombs were positioned horizontally but it was vertical, two-thirds of the bomb was buried, we had to dig it up in part before we could start our operations," said Lai Ngo-yau, officer the demining unit. "The bomb was not stable and we had to be very careful."Targeted DocksIt is not uncommon for pedestrians or workers to fall on unexploded bombs or ammunition in Hong Kong, the scene of fierce fighting between Japan and the allies between the Japanese invasion of December 1941 and the liberation of the city. the summer of 1945.
Jason Wordie, a Hong Kong historian, explains that the territory was bombed by the United States in 1941 at the beginning of the Pacific campaign. "They were aiming at the docks around the harbor," he says.After the war, the numerous embankment works to gain on the sea made it possible to discover numerous bombs in the port, adds the historian. The heavier gear found in the semi-autonomous territory of southern China was a 900-kg bomb defused in 2014 in the Happy Valley district of eastern Hong Kong.