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902 unexploded WWII bombs found under Japanese restaurant

In what must have been a very scary discovery, over 900 WWII bombs have been found beneath a restaurant in Okinawa, Japan.

“It’s rare to find this many unexploded munitions at once,” said Maedomari.

“Because unexploded munitions from the Second World War are scattered across Okinawa, construction workers always use metal detectors before starting to dig the ground,” he said.

Unexploded munitions are periodically found across Japan, even in highly developed Tokyo.

Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war, with US forces unleashing an 83-day air and amphibious assault dubbed by locals the “Typhoon of Steel”. Some 190,000 Japanese died, half of them Okinawan civilians.

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13,000-year-old clay figure found in Japan

The clay torso of a woman, which dates back 13,000 years, has been found in Japan.

The tiny figure, 3.1 centimeters in height and 14.6 grams in weight, depicts a female torso with breasts and a waistline.

The figure, which was discovered at the Aidanikumahara archaeological site, is from an incipient era of the Jomon Pottery Culture, according to the association.

Another female clay figure from approximately the same era was found in Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture, in 1996.

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Japan confirms secret Cold War-era pacts with US

Japan has confirmed the existence of secret Cold War-era pacts with the US that allowed nuclear-armed warships to enter Japanese ports, violating Tokyo’s postwar principles.

While declassified U.S. documents have already confirmed such 1960s agreements, Tuesday’s revelation broke with decades of official denials.

The investigation by a government-mandated panel is part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s campaign to rein in the power of bureaucrats and make his government, which was elected to power last year, more open than that of the long-ruling conservatives, who repeatedly denied the existence of such pacts.

“It’s regrettable that such facts were not disclosed to the public for such a long time, even after the end of the Cold War era,” Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told a news conference, adding that the investigation was meant to restore public trust in Japan’s diplomacy.

The panel examined documents surrounding four pacts, including Tokyo’s tacit permission that U.S. nuclear-armed warships could make calls at Japanese ports – a violation of Japan’s so-called three non-nuclear principles not to make, own or allow the entry of atomic weapons.

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Pterodactyls coexisted with birds

The world’s first pterosaur tracks from Japan suggest that pterodactyls coexisted with birds 127 million years ago.

For the latest study, accepted for publication in the journal Cretaceous Research, Lee and his colleagues focused on the pterosaur tracks. The scientists identified a total of 64 imprints made by five to six individuals that “show a clear quadrupedal gait pattern” with feet bearing curved “hook-like sharp” claws.

“The high density of the tracks suggest gregarious behavior, but the random orientation of the trackways does not show that they were moving in the same direction as a herd,” Lee said.

He and his team instead think the pterosaurs and birds randomly gathered to feed. The eating marks consist of “small round depressions on the slab,” possibly where the animals repeatedly pecked away for food.

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Human remains could reveal Unit 731 details

Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious medical research team, carried out secret Josef Mengele-style experiments on human test subjects. Now some remains from the unit are prompting a reopened investigation into what crimes occurred.

The experiments included hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers.

Now new detail about their victims’ suffering could be revealed after the authorities in Tokyo announced plans to open an investigation into human bones thought to have come from the unit.

A new search is also due to be carried out for mass graves that may contain more victims of human experiments.

The bones are thought to be from up to 100 people and were discovered in a mass grave in 1989 during construction work.

They bore the marks of saws and some of the skulls had drill holes and portions of the bone cut out. But the issue is so controversial in Japan that they have since been stored in a repository.

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