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Kobe woman’s cleaning interrupted by discovery of enormous artillery shell in her closet

If it’s been a while since you’ve cleaned out your cabinets and closets, you can be surprised at what you find inside them. Sometimes, you’ll uncover good things, like the time I was straightening up and came across an envelope with 5,000 yen (US$49.50) which I’d earmarked for some purpose, then forgotten about. Other times, the surprises aren’t so pleasant, like the time in my old, first-floor apartment where I lifted up a box and found a scurrying cockroach underneath.

As disgusting as the creepy critter was, though, in pure shock value it pales in comparison to what a woman in Japan found in her home: an artillery shell.

Last Saturday, the 49-year-old resident of Kobe made the startling discovery in one of the closets in her home. Reports described the item as “a 35-centimeter (13.8-inch) long cylinder, seven centimeters in diameter with a cone-shaped tip.” As if that wasn’t enough of a tipoff, engraved on the side were the Japanese kanji characters for “Type 88,” which matches the designation of an Imperial Japanese Army antiaircraft gun that first saw use in the late 1920s.

While it’s unlikely the woman had an extensive background in decades-old Japanese military technology, she still realized she’d found something potentially dangerous. Rather than contact the authorities by phone, however, she decided to deliver the item to the local police box, the Shima Yamatedori Koban, by tossing it in a sturdy paper bag and carrying it herself.

The gutsy woman walked into the police box around 7:20 in the evening, politely informed the officers on duty that “Umm…I found something that looks like a bomb in my house,” and presented it to them. The police quickly recognized the enormous bullet, noting that the size of the object was in keeping with the specs of the ammunition used by the above-mentioned gun–some varieties of which were designed to be highly explosive.

Moments later, the officers had sealed off the police box, cleared the surrounding area and called in a Self Defense Force bomb squad to collect the shell. Some 100 residents of the surrounding area were also evacuated while waiting for the object to be removed.

Thankfully, everyone is now back home safe and sound, with no damage to the neighborhood. Let this be a lesson though: Don’t go too long between cleaning sessions. There just might be something worse than mold or decades-old skin mags lurking in your closet.

Sources: Sankei News, Hachima Kikou
Insert images: Wikimedia/Megapixie

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