Solomon Islander Dennis Phillip was ploughing his soil by hand when he heard an unusual clunk -- one of the countless unexploded bombs still scattered across the small Pacific nation decades after World War II.

Japanese and Allied forces waged a savage campaign across the Solomon Islands from 1942 to 1945, in which tens of thousands were killed.

They left behind bombs now buried under homes, schools, businesses, football fields and Phillip's vegetable garden.

Records are patchy, but estimates suggest dozens have been killed and many more wounded by ordnance littered across the otherwise idyllic landscape.

Bernadette Miller Wale remembers playing with bombs when she was a young girl growing up outside the Solomons capital, Honiara.

"You'd see items, you'd touch it, move it, you weren't really aware of the dangers that it posed," she told AFP.

She and her friends would even set them off on purpose -- they called them "backyard fireworks".

These days Miller Wale spends her days trying to educate Solomon Islanders about the dangers of........

© International Business Times