Guadalcanal's Deadly WWII Battlefields: Solomon Islands' Bomb Problem

TaiwanPlus News

Eighty years after some of World War II’s fiercest battles, unexploded bombs still endanger communities across the Solomon Islands. The HALO Trust and local authorities are racing to clear tens of thousands of hidden explosives that continue to claim lives and threaten daily life.

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00:00The Allied plan was to wrest these important islands one by one from entrenched Japanese

00:05soldiers and Marines. On August 7, 1942, American Marines in their first major amphibious operation

00:14landed on Guadalcanal. For over 80 years, generations of Solomon Islanders have lived

00:20with the deadly legacy of World War II. I was at my house. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was just

00:27sitting with my daughter and a few of my in-laws. And then we heard the explosion. And everyone

00:33was like, oh, what is this? We felt the aftershock. And everyone was a bit confused at that time

00:39because, like, it's been 80 years and this explosion, like, it just happened out of nowhere.

00:45During the war, the Solomon Islands, particularly Guadalcanal, were a key battleground between

00:50the Japanese Empire and the United States. Today, remnants from the fighting in the form

00:56of thousands of unexploded bombs are still being found, sometimes by farmers, other times

01:01by children, buried beneath homes, in school playgrounds, and in vegetable gardens. But

01:07most are in old battlegrounds. So this is a very well-known battlefield in the Guadalcanal

01:14campaign, the Battle of Bloody Ridge or also called Edson's Ridge. In 1942, this ridge saw

01:20intense fighting between the U.S. Marine Corps and Japanese Imperial troops. So vicious,

01:25it devolved into hand-to-hand combat. Today, its lush, windswept slopes are saturated with

01:31unexploded ordnance, or UXO. We have cleared a boundary where we put the fence up. And that's

01:39the famous hill. So three months ago, we cleared that. And it was a lot of UXO. 16,000 small arms,

01:50caliber bullet, unfired, just laying around. And then there were 53 hand grenades, rifle grenades,

01:58just laying around the rim of where people walk around all the time.

02:02But bombs are found across the country, not just in its battlefield. Bernadette Miller-Wallet and her

02:08friends played with them as children, intentionally detonating what they called backyard fireworks.

02:14Today, she works with Fahelo Trust, a UK charity that clears landmines and unexploded bombs worldwide

02:21and teaches communities how to stay safe. I think before working for Halo, I think I was just the same

02:27as everyone else. Like you'd see items, you touch it, move it. You weren't really aware of the dangers

02:34that it poses to us. So like, that's why when I started working with Halo and we did risk educations,

02:41we tell people to like, okay, if you see items, wherever you find it, do not touch it, do not go

02:46near it, report it. We encourage people to report it to the police. Halo Trust is working with communities

02:51to map UXO hotspots in red. If they find, then remove a bomb, they cover it with a yellow sticker.

02:57Behind me, the dots are showing points of ordinance that have then been, the police have responded,

03:04and the police have either removed them or destroyed them on site, depending on the risk posed.

03:09Although Halo's operation in the Solomon Islands is small, it's helped destroy around 50,000 unexploded

03:15bombs over the past 15 years. Their maps show it's hard to go even 100 meters without finding one,

03:22meaning they've likely only scratched the surface. Here, everybody knows someone that has been

03:28affected. They've either found something in their back garden, their children have, or they know

03:33somebody that was injured or someone who sadly died as a result of an item exploding. Long after US

03:40and Japanese forces fought one of World War II's fiercest campaigns, Solomon Islanders are still finding

03:46bombs in their homes and on their idyllic coastal slopes. Eighty years later, their own battle against

03:52the remnants of that conflict is proving to be an uphill fight. Justin Wu and Bryn Thomas for Taiwan Plus.

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