Finding the lost explosives along Maruyama Trail
In brief
An 80-year old jungle track created by Japanese troops through Guadacanal still contains many hidden dangers.
Two thousand kilometres northeast of Australia are the coral atolls, volcanic mountain ranges and tropical rainforests of the Solomon Islands. The country is a remote archipelago of over 900 islands, spanning almost 1500km of the South Pacific. It was also the site of some of the fiercest battles of the Second World War.
Deep in the jungle of Guadalcanal, the country's largest island, are the remains of a forgotten 15-mile trail, winding through steep forest ridges and ravines. The trail, known as the Maruyama Trail, was once walked in secret under the cover of the thick jungle canopy by 7,000 Japanese soldiers, on the way to meet a deafening defeat against the US Forces.
Today, the jungle has reclaimed large parts of the trail. However, clues still remain that can help to piece together the soldiers' journey. Abandoned ordnance, found by local communities hunting and gathering in the jungle, provide an indication of the exact path of the lost footsteps of the Japanese.
Eighty years later, survey teams in The HALO Trust are finally hunting down this abandoned ordnance to piece together the location of this trail.
The deadly legacy of the war
It's not uncommon for Solomon Islanders to come across unexploded ordnance while digging vegetable plots or building new homes. Children play with the explosives found in bullets, making improvised fireworks for Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Grenades are sometimes kept in homes as keepsakes, people mistakenly assuming that they are no longer dangerous. Living among bombs is part of everyday life for many.
The capital city, Honiara, is built on the remains of numerous battlegrounds. In 2024, an abandoned stockpile of over 200 projectiles was uncovered at a school in central Honiara while digging a hole for sewage. In 2025, nearby, a subsurface bomb exploded under a fire of burning rubbish on a busy roadside.
Since records began in 2011, the police have destroyed over 60,000 items of unexploded ordnance reported by the public. This represents a fraction of the problem.
The HALO Trust has been working in the Solomon Islands since 2023 to map this problem for the first time. Combining archival research, police records, community liaison and field observation, HALO's survey teams are building a picture of the scale and extent of the unexploded ordnance contamination across the Solomon Islands.
My father told me to be afraid of the bombs in the bush from the war.
But we need the bush cleared and made safe. Future generations need space to grow food and build houses and we have a growing population. We need to be able to move around the bush safely.
The fight for Henderson Field
Much of unexploded bombs are found on Guadalcanal, where the Japanese and US Allies vied for control over Henderson Field, now the capital’s international airport.
After capturing Henderson Field from in August 1942, the US Allied Forces enjoyed superiority over the surrounding airspace, able to disrupt enemy supply lines and troop reinforcements. The US Allies defended the airstrip with a heavily manned perimeter.
In October 1942, Japanese commanders devised a complex four-pronged attack to retake the airstrip. This involved a surprise attack from the southern rear and simultaneous diversionary attacks made along the coast and at other points around the defensive perimeter.
For the surprise rear attack to work, Japanese Forces needed to advance undetected by the Americans. The dense jungle canopies and steep, sloping ridges and ravines provided the perfect terrain to hide from US reconnaissance flights. Japanese engineers began hacking a trail known as the 'Maruyama Trail', covering a 15-mile stretch from the West of Honiara, now the capital city, to the grassy ridges south of the airstrip.
Over 7,000 soldiers, under Lieutenant General Masao Maruyama, set off on their jungle march. Each soldier carrying just over a week's supply of food, ammunition, and an artillery shell each.
We are finding bombs along the Maruyama trail because during the war most of the Japanese soldiers got sick from malaria and starvation and left the ammunition they carried on the ground.
The trail was used in October 1942 by thousands of Japanese soldiers, led by General Maruyama, whose name is given to the trail. If explosives are cleared from this trail we'll create opportunities for the country and our people in the tourism industry and farming.
The road of white bones
The winding and difficult trek took the Japanese troops far longer than initially anticipated. Food supplies began to dwindle, and malaria and dysentery ran rife among the exhausted and malnourished troops. The island was nicknamed "starvation island" by the half-starved troops.
Tired troops were forced to drop their ammunition along the way, unable to carry their heavy load through the jungle. Artillery and canons, which had to be disassembled and transported on foot, were thrown away. In the end, the attack was carried out largely with rifles alone. The Japanese troops suffered a devastating defeat, where just 1,000 of the initial 7,000 retreated back down the Maruyama Trail. A Japanese account states that during the retreat, the trail was nicknamed "white bone road".
In 2026, HALO Solomon Islands began to walk segments of the Maruyama Trail to hunt for the lost dumps of artillery and ammunition littering the old jungle path.
"It's hard to imagine 7,000 soldiers walked this route", says HALO's Emma Saunders, "carrying bags of rice, ammunition and artillery shells on their backs. When we arrived at the spot where the bombs had been discovered, after a climb up a jungle slope, we found small piles of abandoned Japanese projectiles, mortars and grenades."
Donate to save lives today
Just £15 a month can make a difference
