It's Always Something in Yokota

If you remember a few months ago, our last trip to Yokota ended in a futile week long attempt to secure a free military space available flight to the US.....to refresh everyone's memory, Yokota is an Air Force base located about 3 hours from Yokosuka on the other side of Tokyo. Close to Mt. Fuji, basically. On a bad traffic day, it can take up to 6 hours to reach Yokota from Yokosuka.

The command John is attached to has the responsibility of taking the bus weekly from Yokosuka to Yokota and meeting people at the Yokota military airport and helping them onto the bus to Yokosuka. John volunteered to go today in the hopes of doing some shopping at the much larger Air Force department store. Te Air Force department store not only has great American clothing items, but lots of fun Japanese stuff as well. John has about two hours of personal time before he has to assist people onto the bus to leave back to Yokosuka. I decide to go with him to indulge in some retail therapy as well. I figure I'll be back in time for derby practice at 4pm.

Turns out it was a horrible day to go....first, hours before we arrived construction workers on Yokota found an unexploded WWII bomb buried 10ft deep. They called an expert ordinance team from Yokosuka to come contain the situation. No one was allowed anywhere near the shopping area.

Then we found out the bus driver, who was supposed to wait in Yokota for everyone to board back to Yokosuka left without anyone on board. No one noticed until the bus driver was all the way back in Yokosuka. The poor guy had to turn around and drive another three hours to pick us all back up. Needless to say, the three hour delay put us at home much later than anticipated.

By the way, the ordinance team decided to explode the bomb. The military airport kept making announcements that the bomb would be exploded and not to be alarmed if we heard any explosion noises....they were aware of the situation.

More about the bomb can be found here:

EOD experts detonate WWII bomb on Yokota Air Base

The team did everything just fine and no one was hurt. The shopping center opened a few hours after we left.