Munitions depot explosion at Kadena Air Base leaves four injured
Four members of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force were injured after a munition exploded on Kadena Air Base on Monday.
The Air Force's 18th Wing, based out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, confirmed that an explosion occurred at a munitions storage site on the northern side of the base. No U.S. personnel were injured and local authorities said that there is no risk of further explosions, according to the U.S. Air Force and Kyodo News.
Members of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force were working in the munitions storage area, managed by the Okinawa Prefectural Government, when one item exploded, leaving four Japanese troops injured. According to Japanese media, the explosion happened while JSDF members were preparing to safely dispose of an unexploded ordnance. Per reports, the depot is a temporary storage spot, mainly used for leftover unexploded munitions from World War II.
Okinawa was heavily bombed during World War II, as part of the U.S. military's campaign to capture the island in 1945. 80 years later and Japanese and American authorities continue to locate and dispose of unexploded ordnance, with more than 2,000 tons of munitions taken out.
This is a developing story.
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Unexpected finds in Chicago parks
Ah, it finally feels like summer in the city. We can't wait to spend as much time outside as possible. But did you know your favorite Chicago park might have a secret past? These are some of the unexpected things we found when looking through the Tribune's archives. In parks featuring lagoons, Park District officers were kept busy chasing poachers who fished without a permit. Some parks — Lincoln, Garfield and Washington among them — had holding cells in their field houses. The Park District police were consolidated into the Chicago Police Department at 12:01 a.m., Jan. 1, for the territorial border agreed to by the Pottawattomie and the U.S. government, this park formerly featured a zoo. The first animal housed there was a single black bear named Teddy. It was donated by Frank Kellogg, president of the now-defunct Park Avenue Park District. Pheasant, ducks and an opossum followed. More recently, varieties of goats, exotic farm chickens and roosters and an African water fowl called the one-acre zoo inside the 13-acre park home. There is now a nature center and a bird migration area at the park, but no the oldest park in Chicago, the 3-acre landmark was the landing spot for many people who lost their homes after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The space earned the name 'Bughouse Square' — American slang for a mental health facility — in the early 1900s when people would come to the park to stand on soapboxes and crates to give long lectures about their theories, passions and ideologies — no matter how addled, goofy or, indeed, sharp and smart. Some of the people who used to speak and argue in the park were famous: Carl Sandburg, Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs. Others were anonymous anarchists, dreamers, lunatics, poets and sprawling lakefront park is home to Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago History Museum, beaches and bodies. Burials took place in the Chicago City Cemetery, which was north of North Avenue along the lakefront and outside the then-city limits. Bodies were later relocated to other cemeteries due to a variety of factors — city expansion northward, health risks associated with rising lake levels and their proximity to decaying bodies buried in shallow graves, and a lawsuit concerning one of the cemetery's sections. But some were probably left behind, Helen Sclair discovered. Her suspicions were confirmed after visiting the Illinois Regional Archives Depository at Northeastern Illinois University. Tribune reporter Ron Grossman wrote, 'Sclair seems to have been the first to guess that the archive might contain records of the old lakefront cemetery. … Eventually, she found more than 600 relevant documents, had them photographed, then copied by hand their virtually illegible 19th century handwritings.' Today, the tomb of innkeeper Ira Couch is the most visible reminder of what the area was used for, but as many as 12,000 bodies might still lie below open-air 'floating hospitals' in Lincoln Park were built between the 1870s and the 1900s, and offered excursions from the piers on Lake Michigan. In 1914, the Chicago Daily News offered to fund a more permanent sanitarium building. Opened in 1921, the impressive Prairie-style structure was one of several Lincoln Park buildings designed by Dwight H. Perkins of the firm Perkins, Fellows, and Hamilton. Perkins, an important Chicago social reformer and Prairie School architect, designed buildings, including Café Brauer, the Lion House in the Lincoln Park Zoo and the North Pond Café. The impressive Chicago Daily News Fresh Air Sanitarium building was constructed in brick with a steel arched pavilion with 250 basket baby cribs, nurseries and rooms for older children. The breezes through the shelter were believed to cure babies suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases. Free health services, milk and lunches were provided to more than 30,000 children each summer until 1939, when the sanitarium closed. Major reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive led to the demolition of the building's front entrance. During World War II, the structure became an official recreation center for the United Service Organization. The Chicago Park District converted the building to Theatre on the Lake in the early 1950s. Today it's a lakefront restaurant and venue that hosts concerts and theater named for Stephen A. Douglas, the senator from Illinois and noted Lincoln debater, the Chicago Park District board of commissioners voted on Nov. 18, 2020, to officially rename this park in honor of abolitionists Anna Murray Douglass and Frederick Douglass. Though many parks around the city now have swimming pools, Douglass Park became the first to have one devoted to recreation. Immigrants who lived in this area in the mid-1890s petitioned to have Chicago's first outdoor public swimming pool built there. When it opened in August 1896, the Tribune reported 15,000 people braved bad weather to celebrate with a parade. 'The German, Polish, and Bohemian athletic societies in the city had charge of the exercises. Long before the hour set for the beginning of the procession hundreds of uniformed Turners and bicyclists gathered … It was estimated that 3,000 men were in line. The procession consisted of four divisions, each headed by a band.' A pool still exists in the park. It is used for day camps, classes and open were in bloom when the Washington Park Conservatory debuted at 56th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in late 1897. Heated by exhaust steam piped in from a plant 700 feet away, the new 'floral castle' provided South Siders with a warm respite and lush surroundings inside the 425-foot-long hothouse constructed of stone, iron and glass. Thirty-foot-tall palm trees flourished under the conservatory's main dome and exotic fruits trees, ferns, grasses and vines were also mixed in. Washington Park long a site of change, controversyThe conservatory held exhibitions throughout the year, but plans were made in 1936, to tear it down. Its structure was deemed weak and too expensive to repair. A Park District police station was later constructed at 57th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center opened there in South Shore neighborhood was, like much of Chicago, a place where ethnic groups came and went. Yet above the club's porte-cochere, its arched entrance way, was a sign proclaiming that the South Shore Country Club was: 'For Members Only.' 'Until it closed in 1974, the club was, in the coded language of the time, 'restricted,'' Grossman wrote in 2016. 'Remember that this was a private club in its time and if you were Black or Jewish, forget about it,' a Chicago Park District official told the Tribune in 1984, when the club was renovated, prior to reopening as the South Shore Cultural Center. 'People who have never been here before will walk in and realize they are in the Taj Mahal.' South Shore: From exclusive country club to inclusive cultural centerThe club was worthy of such hyperbole. The main clubhouse, built in the then-tony Mediterranean Revival style, featured a cavernous main dining room and grand ballroom joined by a 'passaggio,' a broad and towering corridor. It was so long that three orchestras could play in different parts of the clubhouse without interfering with each other. Its facilities came to include a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, a trap-shooting range, lawn-bowling courts and stables, bridle paths and a dressage ring for equestrian members. The club's Horse Show was the high point of Chicago's social season. In 1920, the club added a band shell to its music venues. The club reached its high point of a little more than 2,000 members in 1953. But membership declined as the neighborhood's demographics changed. In 1975, the club sold its property to the Chicago Park District. Years of squabbling followed over what to do with the site. Park District officials weren't eager to spend money on the clubhouse and athletic facilities. Maintenance had been neglected as the club's revenues shrank. 'Ironically, Blacks — many of whom are now fighting to preserve the structures — were barred from the grounds except to work,' the Tribune observed in 1977. In the end, the neighborhood won. The buildings and grounds were renovated and now host jazz festivals, the restaurant Nafsi, art exhibitions and lectures. Michelle and Barack Obama held their 1992 wedding reception there. Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Story of Navy sailor killed during World War II told by Muhlenberg man
It is difficult to imagine the terror onboard the U.S.S. Tang on Oct. 24, 1944. The submarine was in the Taiwan Strait off the coast of China that day when it was struck by a circular run of its own torpedo and sunk, costing the lives of 78 men. The nine survivors were picked up by a Japanese frigate and taken prisoner. About one-third of the crew was killed instantly by the explosive hit, author Dennis Damiani said. One of them was Homer Anthony, a 21-year-old Reading man. Anthony's diary entries for the first six months of 1943 are the subject of Damiani's recently published book, 'Homer Anthony — The Diary of a Navy Sailor.' Damiani edited and annotated the diary and wrote the introduction and epilogue of the slim volume, published by Masthoff Press, Morgantown. Dennis Damiano's book, Homer Anthony - The Diary of a Navy Sailor." (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE) The Muhlenberg Township author presented a pre-Memorial Day program on Anthony at the Berks History Center in Reading. 'I have to thank the Philadelphia Phillies for this book,' Damiani said, only partly joking. He and his wife, Sharon, like to watch baseball games on TV, he explained. But they found one game in the summer of 2015 difficult to watch. The Phillies were losing badly, and Damiani was bored. He opened his iPad and began searching for topics of interest. A 1973 to 1978 veteran of the Air Force whose father served in World War II, Damiani said he has long been intrigued by U.S. history, particularly military history. He landed on the homepage of a website dedicated to all those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the U.S. submarine force. 'As I viewed pictures of the lost crew members, I was immediately struck by their youth,' he said. Homer Anthony, a World War II sailor who is the subject of a book by Dennis Damiani. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE) Then on the pages for the Tang, he saw the photo of Fireman First Class Anthony with his name and hometown. 'Who is this guy from Reading?' Damiani said he wondered. 'I want to know more about him.' His journey to learn more took him to the Reading Public Library, where he found a 1941 Reading High School yearbook with the young man's photograph. It also took him to the history center, through more internet research and eventually to Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading, where he found the grave of Anthony's brother Socrates. 'His marker also listed his wife, Ruth, but there was no death date,' Damiani said. 'So I figured she was living.' He found a phone listing, and after several weeks overcame his hesitation to call. They spoke for a few minutes before arranging for Damiani to visit the homebound Ruth. That visit turned into many more and an enduring friendship. On one visit, Ruth smiled and held up a small black, leather-bound book. It was Anthony's diary. 'You know a lot about Homer, Dennis,' she said, 'but you don't know about this.' The opening pages of Homer Anthony's diary, the basis of Dennis Damiani's book "Homer Anthony - The Diary of a Navy Sailor. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE) By reading the diary, Damiani felt he came to know Anthony. 'Homer was an intelligent young man,' he said. 'He loved to learn and read. His honesty and humor draw the reader of the diary to him in a heartwarming way.' Anthony's sense of humor and talent for writing come through on the pages of the diary, he said. Damiani said he was struck by Anthony's patriotism and commitment to doing his duty for his country. 'I believe those who read the diary will come to admire and respect Homer the way I have,' he said. The entries provide a sense of the man Anthony was, his goal of saving for college, his dream of becoming a poet and his acceptance of the fact that he might not survive the war. His poem 'Morbid Thoughts on a Rainy Day,' written Jan. 26 and 27, 1943, seems almost a premonition of his death, Damiani said. The entries also reflect an era, turning a lens on the patriotism, pop culture and racism of the period. While in Norfolk, Va., attending what he called torpedo school, Anthony witnessed extreme racism for perhaps the first time, Damiani said. 'They definitely draw the race line down here,' the serviceman wrote on Jan. 19, 1943, describing the segregation practiced in public buildings, on streetcars and elsewhere. 'To one who was born under Northern Climes, it comes as a surprise, but an interesting one, nonetheless.' In several entries, Anthony mentions high school friends, most of whom were also serving in the military. 'Reading High School in 1941, the year Homer graduated, had 807 seniors,' Damiani said. 'Of those, 430 were boys, and out of this figure, 327, or 76%, either enlisted or were drafted. 'Twelve lost their lives while serving in World War II.' Damiani said he is honored to preserve the story of one of these sometimes-forgotten heroes. 'I am convinced that Homer would have been an author of books and articles,' he said. 'His diary testifies to this.' With the publication of his diary, Anthony has become the published author he aspired to be. The book, 'Homer Anthony — Diary of a Navy Sailor' is available for sale in the Berks History Center's gift shop. For more information, email Damiani at civilman71@
Fox News
4 hours ago
- Fox News
WWII hero's special memento finally comes home to his family after 80 years
A World War II soldier's dog tag has finally been returned to his family, 80 years after his death. Technical Sergeant Joseph L. Gray was one of 31 U.S. servicemen who tragically died on April 23, 1945, when the group's B-17G Flying Fortress crashed into a mountain on the Isle of Man. The plane never reached its destination after taking off from an airbase in England during World War II, news agency SWNS reported. The tragedy remains the deadliest aviation disaster in the island's history, the same source noted. In 2010, a local metal detectorist discovered Gray's dog tag. The detectorist turned it over to the Manx Aviation and Military Museum, where it was kept safe for years. The tag's return only became possible when Donald Madar, whose great-uncle also died in the crash, made a personal pilgrimage to the crash site this April from his home in Pennsylvania. Madar had been connected to Gray's family since 2020, when Gray's great-niece, Clare Quinn, reached out to him through a Facebook group about the crash. "Something stuck out about the name." "When I was visiting and holding the tag, something stuck out about the name and I remembered the post she had written five years ago," Madar recalled. "She asked about Joseph and told us all about him in a post she uploaded," he added, referring to Clare Quinn. "I then reached out to her. That was where we came up with the plan to return it home through her sister," Madar said. While on the Isle of Man, Madar met with a museum historian, Ivor Ramsden, who handed him the tag along with a personal letter to deliver to Gray's family. The final handoff took place on May 7, when Madar drove 40 minutes to the Brickville House Restaurant in Pennsylvania. "I could see the emotion rush into her - her eyes began to tear up," Madar said about the moment he passed the tag to Bridgette Daily, Clare Quinn's sister. "I could tell it was so important for her family that they took possession of a piece of their history," Madar said. "It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining," he recalled. "We went in blind as we hadn't shared images of each other as we were talking over email," said Madar. "We sat down and talked about the event, the history, and of course, Joseph," he said. "It was great to get to know him through her stories." "I built the moment up, only revealing the letter when I thought it was the right time - it was a wonderful moment," said Madar. Madar said he is "thankful" to the Manx Aviation and Military Museum for helping to make the transfer happen.
