President Takeju Ogata of The Nippon Foundation recently visited the Japan Mine Action Service (JMAS) in Laos to observe first hand the mine clearance techniques of the organization’s Japanese and Laotian staff.

Mr Ogata listened to explanations about the work of the UXO (unexploded ordnance) teams, who search for bombs, land mines, hand grenades and other explosives that litter the Laotian landscape: legacies of the Vietnam War.

Ogata visited Namtong Village, located 20 minutes from Phonsavan. Ogata said that at first he was impressed with the serenity of the rice fields and surrounding scenery, but then he came face to face with a harsh reality:

"Dud" bomb being exploded

“In a little field dotted with the stumps of the previous rice harvest lay 15 or so piles of pink sandbags, placed there in preparation for the disposal of “Bomby” cluster bombs. The field was still being used to grow rice, and had been tilled to a depth of 15-20 centimeters by ploughs yoked to oxen and water buffalo." “For the people of this area, unexploded ordnance is a part of daily life. The bombs lie here in part because the United States, following the bombing of Vietnam, used Laos as a dumping ground for vast quantities of unused ordnance. War, whether just or not, imposes untold hardship on subsequent generations,” he said in a recent essay in the JMAS newsletter. A familiar story was told before Ogata’s visit about a Laotian farmer who raised his axe to cut through what he thought was a tree root. Instead, he hit a rusted, unexploded U.S. air force bomb. The axe's impact triggered an explosion killing the farmer and four of his five children. This incident is not isolated. There are thousands of similar examples that continue to occur in Laos on a regular basis. If disturbed, these "dud" bombs can explode with murderous force. Even the ringing of a cell phone can sometimes set them off. An estimated 80 million bombs were dropped on Laos by the U.S. during the Indochina war from the 1960s to 1975. Military experts say that 10% to 30% of those bombs were duds that didn't go off at the time. They lie buried and rusting in fields, ponds, and hillsides over a vast area of Laos, especially along what was called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a jungle route used by North Vietnamese to supply troops fighting against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Since the 1990s, teams of bomb disposal experts from several countries have assisted the Laotian government in finding, defusing, and destroying bombs as large as 3000 lbs. Additionally, they have been finding massive numbers of deadly anti-personnel cluster bombs, land mines, artillery rounds, mortar shells, and rocket propelled grenades. One of these international teams of volunteer bomb disposal experts is the Japan Mine Action Service (JMAS), made up ex-Self Defense Force personnel. They work closely with a division of the Laotian Ministry of Labor and Welfare known as UXO (Unexploded Ordnance).

Barrel full of rusting ordnance

In the past nine years JMAS has also helped to train Laotian UXO bomb disposal units that include women trainees. Together the JMAS and UXO teams have found tens of thousands of unexploded bombs and ordnance that subsequently have been safely destroyed in controlled, ear-splitting detonations. UXO teams alone have found and disposed of over a hundred thousand of these devices.

JMAS's life-saving work is funded by official developmental assistance from the Japanese government, and financial support from The Nippon Foundation. If it had not been for this crucial support, more Laotians in rural areas would have been killed or badly injured.

Unfortunately, since the end of the Indochina War in 1975, many thousands of accidents have indeed occurred, killing or maiming many men, women, and children. This threatening situation continues to lurk just beneath the surface of good farm land, scaring away many Laotians who would otherwise gladly use the fertile soil.

While Laotian government bomb disposal teams have become more proficient at their work, they still require outside expert support and funding. The Nippon Foundation funds this technical support and training with the aim of passing on these crucial skills to locally trained teams who are building up their own self-supporting, national organizations.

JMAS volunteers, who refer to themselves jokingly as the "oyaji" (old men), maintain offices in Laos, Cambodia, and Pakistan (this office supports bomb clearance activities in Afghanistan), where they regularly search out unexploded ordnance in these countries and train local bomb-disposal teams.

Mr Ogata observed female UXO members cautiously poke around in the earth with the weighted probes used for preliminary bomb disposal. “The women work under the strict but warm and protective gaze of seasoned veterans of the Japanese self-defense force,” said Ogata.

However, it was pointed out that in Xiengkhoung Province alone, it is estimated that it will take two to three hundred years to completely dispose of all the bombs.

“The sight of the women at work, with little concern for the many hours required or the possible outcomes, is one which will remain with me for many years. To me, these women are living proof that crimes perpetrated by humans, no matter how heinous, can with time be resolved by humans,” said Ogata.