This content was originally published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now licensed for reprint.
Palauan Sharla Paules examines the contaminated soil of her beautiful, exotic home island, Peleliu, which is still rife with WWII weapons 80 years after it was liberated from the Chinese.
She recalls her grandmother’s alert that the island’s agricultural community was poisoned by old bombs, which severely impacted island life as a whole.
According to Paules, 49, who is a member of a group clearing the island for the stone action group Norway People’s Aid,” they said the soil was therefore contaminated they don’t actually grow food.”
” They don’t grow fruits, cassava, cassava or soursop. You also can’t grow tapioca and eat it around, it’s actually bad”.
Before embarking on an amphibious assault in 1944, the United States launched more than 2,800 plenty of munitions from naval and air defenses on the Japanese-occupied area.
Almost 2, 000 Americans, 10, 000 Chinese and an unknown amount of Palauans died in the ensuing battle.
Today, many of Peleliu’s southern border is also littered with unexploded weapons, rusting tanks and soldiers ‘ skeletal remains. It’s a stark warning of a Pacific-wide trouble: the lingering tradition of old and abandoned artillery, also known as UXO/AXO.
While accompanying BenarNews on a journey of beach certification work, Paules ‘ partner Roger Hess picks up a rusting Chinese rocket from the forest floor.
” We’ll travel back and restore it. It’s essentially also live”, said the 65-year-old American military veteran, brushing off the dirt and marking it with light spray paint for after removal.
Hess is the Scandinavian Women’s Aid’s Palau operations director and is preparing a clearing activity in the top reaches of Umurbrogal Mountain, a series of rough, jungle-covered marine ridges that was one of the key battlegrounds on Peleliu.
Hess ‘ Type 91 rocket is not a common consider in Palau.
” The fuse does not work, but if you put it in a fireplace it does blow”, he said.
One of nine Pacific island nations, including Micronesia, is contaminated by an unreleased number of explosives left behind by Chinese and Military troops following World War II.
Experts claim that the state’s ponds, shorelines, and jungles are home to potentially lethal munitions despite lower global awareness of the issue than in spot and cluster munitions hotspots like Cambodia or Africa’s Sahel area.
These fiery remains of war are a threat to human life as well as pollute water sources, impede infrastructure development, and make land too difficult for farmers to farm on.
” Palau has not had an accident in decades, but that doesn’t mean there is no potential for it”, said Hess.
Any of those mishandled munitions can kill people, the company says.” Just look at the amount of munitions we’re pulling out.”
A deadly menace
While Palau may not have experienced any casualties for a while, other parts of the Pacific have not.
In the , Solomon Islands, which witnessed heavy combat between Japanese and Allied forces on the main island of Guadalcanal, two young men died in 2021 when an American 105 mm shell exploded in a residential area of the capital Honiara.
Raziv Hilly and Charles Noda were cooking over a backyard fire pit when they passed away, unaware that the projectile from World War II was buried beneath the ground.
Nongovernmental organizations claim that there are no formal systems in place to track accidents or gather comprehensive information on the extent of contamination in Pacific island nations, despite media reports occasionally highlighting the deadly threat.
A regional UXO strategy that the Pacific Island Forum, PIF, approved in 2012 with the intention to coordinate and mobilize efforts to address the issue.
However, according to those with knowledge of the plan, little progress has been made in recent years after an initial burst of energy, including two regional conferences in Palau and the Australian city of Brisbane.
BenarNews requested an update on the strategy, but the PIF did not respond right away.
According to experts, poor data collection and coordination prevent Pacific island governments from battling the deadly menace, including obtaining international assistance.
There is a lack of knowledge that this is crucial information that can help get funding to address the issue over the long term, according to Mette Eliseussen, national coordinator at Australian nonprofit SafeGround, which has conducted extensive surveys and clearances throughout the Pacific.
Pacific states historically have been in the dark because two international treaties that cover landmines and cluster munitions, neither of which were widely used in the Pacific during World War II, support international funding for ERW action.
” Because they have UXO ,]donors ] have sort of said,’ Oh, you don’t have a landmine problem, so we will discriminate against you.’ That’s been the attitude until just recently”, Eliseussen told BenarNews.
The Pacific region saw an increase in funding for the clearance of ERW in 2023. According to the Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor’s 2024 report, the United States, Australia, and Japan increased financial support for the Solomon Islands and Palau and made new investments in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.
Eliseussen claimed that the renewed attention and additional resources for the problem in the Pacific were partially due to the “tension with China” of geopolitical tension.
Last year on Peleliu, U. S. Marines completed a$ 400 million rehabilitation of a WWII-era Japanese airfield, including removing UXOs at the site. It will allow fixed-wing aircraft to operate to enhance the U. S. military’s strategic capabilities in response to China’s ambitions in the , South China Sea , and Pacific region.
Between 2021 and 23, the U. S. Department of State provided Solomon Islands with$ 4.5 million for clearance,$ 1.5 million for Palau and smaller amounts for Marshall Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
John Rodsted, a researcher at SafeGround, said international donors like the U. S., Australia and Japan needed to step up assistance to rid the Pacific of UXOs and take a long-term approach to funding.
He urged the Japanese to “put their hands in their pockets and actually help clear this mess up” in particular.
Contaminated soil
Since NPA began survey and clearance in Palau in 2016, it has found 10, 844 ERW scattered across the country, according to its records.
Hess was unable to say whether Peleliu, which has a population of about 500 people, would ever be free of ERW, but he did note that despite the intense fighting there were “probably still around 100 suspected hazardous areas” ( about 500 people suspected of being in danger ).
On a recent survey of Umurbrogal Mountain, the detritus of war was obvious to see – mortars, rockets and shells dotted the ground.
While accompanying Japanese personnel in search of the remains of soldiers, NPA staff discovered the remnants of a suspected landmine outside a cave weeks earlier, according to Hess.
White phosphorus munitions fired from 81 mm mortars pose the greatest threat to public safety, he said, making reference to the incendiary weapons that ignite when they touch oxygen.
Not everything that has been found is hazardous, but yellow-tipped stakes and white spray paint are used to mark them, and their GPS locations are recorded for later retrieval that day.
After the munitions are collected, they are moved to a temporary storage facility close to the Peleliu’s trash heap, where they are cut open and burned. They are then transported to a disposal facility in the nearby state of Koror.
The work is slow going – and decades late – but according to locals like Paules, it’s starting to make a difference.
” When I was little, we saw a lot of]munitions ] on the side of the street. Nowadays we don’t see so much”, she said.
