Scavengers find vintage bombs

ORMOC CITY, Philippines — Scrapping for metals in an abandoned sugar mill, two scavengers accidentally found more than they expected: A stockpile of World War II armaments.

Before they can even think of what to do with the find, however, a concerned citizen already reported to authorities the unusual discovery.

Senior Inspector Shevert Alvin Machete, chief of the city's Police Precinct 1 who led the responding policemen, said that last Monday, Mario Sarno, 30, and Reggie Villarmino, 29, were looking for scrap metals inside the compound of the closed Ormoc Sugar Company in Barangay Ipil. 

The two dug up instead a cache of vintage armaments, consisting of 11 bombs, 33 pieces of 50 mm ammunitions and 10 hand grenades, which were buried less than a meter.

The policemen first secured the site before they transported vintage pile to the custody of the Ormoc City Police Office Supply Section for proper disposition.

Machete, in an interview with The Freeman, theorized that the find maybe a depot of either American or Japanese forces during WWII.

"Though these armaments need more study to determine ownership, a good possibility is that these were naval in nature," he said.

Upon closer look, Machete surmised that the smaller sized ones have torpedo-feature explosives probably used on smaller but faster war boats, which were for raiding coastal areas.

The discovery of the vintage cache was the second in six months. The first, which was in the northern barangay of the city, had similar characteristics with the latest find in the south. Both were unearthed in the coastal barangays and have similarities in sizes, the manner of stockpiling and the strategic locations.

During WW II, the greatest naval battle in the Pacific took place in Leyte Gulf, but Ormoc Bay, during the liberation of the country, was also the site of the fiercest naval battles in Philippine history. - THE FREEMAN