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[quote:33c2a]Hong Kong — When workers dredged waters around Hong Kong to reclaim land for a Disneyland theme park, they scooped up dozens of unexploded bombs and artillery shells along with mud.

The Second World War ended with Japan's announcement of surrender 57 years ago Wednesday. Despite the passing of time, Asia remains littered with millions of pieces of lost and discarded ordnance.

The bombs found south of Hong Kong did not go off, and bomb experts played down the danger to the Disney site being built on an outlying island.

Even so, chance discoveries of corroded and unstable explosives frequently fray nerves at building sites that dot frenetically growing Asian cities and also on the sleepier islands of the South Pacific, which were the scenes of some of the war's most desperate fighting.

Disposal teams say few of the old bombs go off nowadays, but some do and many found still contain live explosive charges.

Asia's problem is compounded by unexploded ordnance and land mines dating from more recent conflicts in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Afghanistan.

"We routinely find the stuff around our installations," said Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Krejcarek, a spokesman at the U.S. Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, the Japanese island where the last major battle of the Second World War ended in June, 1945.

"When you drop bombs from planes, do they all go off?" Col. Krejcarek said. "Some lodge in soft ground. Other times, ordnance just gets pushed aside and the jungle takes over. They've been discovered continuously here since the end of the war."

Japan disposed of 106.3 tonnes of unexploded ordnance last year, the government says. Much more is thought to be still around in other parts of Asia.

The former British colony of Singapore was bombed first by the Japanese and later by the Allies. In July, a bomb was found just off its swanky Orchard Road shopping district — forcing a mass evacuation before a disposal squad made it safe and removed it.

Two years ago, Singaporean navy divers safely detonated a bomb found on the seabed near a busy ferry terminal.

But, the city-state hasn't always been so lucky.

A family picnicking on a beach there in 1991 came across an old bomb. Thinking it was a dud, they used it to prop up a grill to cook fish. It detonated in the heat, killing a boy and injuring other family members.

In the Philippines, Manila was devastated by wartime sea and air bombardments.

The head of its police bomb squad, Senior Inspector Lorenzo Molato, recalled last week how a scavenger recovered a cannon shell five years ago and sold it to a junk shop. A worker at the shop later tried to cut it open with a saw and was killed when it exploded.

Many Filipino construction workers are trained to stop digging if they hit something hard.

"Our problem is finding them," said Philippine Marines Captain Renato Daracan of the military's Office of Chief Ordnance and Chemical Service. "During the war, they just fired away without recording where their targets were, where the shells landed or whether they exploded or not."

Indonesia's northeastern islands have seen a number of deadly explosions of old ordnance. Some were triggered by villagers trying to open bomb casings to remove the explosives for illegal fishing.

During sectarian clashes in recent times between Christians and Muslims in the Maluku islands, divers from both sides scoured the shallow seabed for downed aircraft and unexploded bombs.

They used the explosives they salvaged to blow up each other as well as churches, mosques and other buildings during the bloodshed that ended last year.

One of the world's most famous pieces of war wreckage, John F. Kennedy's sunken patrol boat, was recently discovered in waters off the Solomon Islands, where U.S. and Japanese troops fought a bloody battle for the island of Guadalcanal. While much of its wooden superstructure had rotted away, a torpedo remained intact in its firing tube.
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