"A terrorist attack? An explosion like that is practically war, isn't it?"
"The ammunition depot at Yokota Air Base must have blown up! All those Yanks got blown sky-high! Hell yeah!"
Throughout the streets and alleys of Hamura City in Tama District, car alarms triggered by the earlier explosion kept blaring. Quite a few residents stood by the roadside, craning their necks toward Yokota Air Base.
The mushroom cloud left by the C3 Super Bomb gradually dispersed into the air, a gray mass blotting out the sky.
Eight or nine kilometers away, spectators who thought themselves safe pointed and chattered.
"Those Yanks do nothing but make life miserable for us ordinary people. Who knows how many diseases we'll get from breathing in all that smog and dust!"
Blood tests on residents of the Tama Region had revealed elevated concentrations of fluorinated compounds, chemicals that were difficult for the human body to break down and harmful to health.
Yokota Air Base had a history of multiple leaks involving foam fire extinguishers containing organic fluorine compounds. In November 2023, the Tokyo Shimbun reported that internal American documents showed the base stored 1.4 million liters of water contaminated with organic fluorine compounds.
Yokota Air Base had long been considered the main source of contamination.
"That's not fair. If Yokota Air Base moved somewhere else, what would we live on? American money is still good money."
Like residents around other U.S. military bases in Japan, the people of the Tama Region had a love-hate relationship with the base. They loved the prosperity its economic stimulus brought, yet hated the soldiers' troublemaking and disturbances.
Soon, however, they would never again have to worry about pollution from Yokota Air Base or agonize over their tangled love-hate relationship with it.
A white SUV drove through the streets