Balloon bombs launched from Japan were intended for the United Statesmany hit their mark. Dottie McGinnis, sister of Dick and Joan Patzke, later recalled to her daughter in a family memory book the shock of coming home to cars gathered in the driveway, and the devastating news that two of her siblings and friends from the community were gone. For Rev. The girls worked long, exhausting shifts, their contributions to this wartime project shrouded in silence. "When launched in groups they are said to have looked like jellyfish floating in the sky. In a snow-covered, heavily forested area southwest of the Montana town, two woodchoppers found a balloon with Japanese markings on it. When does spring start? FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. In total, an estimated 500,000 or more Japanese civilians would be killed. On the morning of May 5, 1945, she decided she felt decent enough to join her husband, Rev. Japan launched more than 9,300 paper balloons carrying bombs over the Pacific Ocean from late 1944 to early 1945 to attack the United States, including Iowa, in an attempt to instill fear and terror during World War II. Military personnel who arrived on the scene observed that the balloon had snow beneath it, unlike the surrounding area, and concluded that it had lain there undisturbed for weeks until discovered. The last few set sail around this time of year,. Utilising the jet stream, Japanese forces launched these hydrogen f. The incidents remind historians and Nebraskans of an incident that occurred in Dundee during World War II. This prompted Army officers to contact military intelligence, commenting that the reporting included "a lot of mechanical detail on the thing, in addition to being a hell of a scare story". Using 40-foot-long ropes attached to the balloons, the military mounted incendiary devices and 30-pound high-explosive bombs rigged to drop over North America and spark massive forest fires. While Archie parked their car, Elsye and the children stumbled upon a strange-looking object in the forest and shouted back to him. To date, only a few hundred of the devices have been found and most are still unaccounted for. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed three days later by another on Nagasaki. Against a scenic backdrop far removed from the war raging across the Pacific, Mitchell and five other children would become the firstand onlycivilians to die by enemy weapons on the United States mainland during World War II. [25] In the "Lightning Project", health and agricultural officers, veterinarians, and 4-H clubs were instructed to report any strange new diseases of crops or livestock caused by potential biological warfare. [15] The B-Type balloons were later equipped with a version of the A-Type's ballast system and tested on November 2, 1944; one of these balloons, which was not loaded with bombs, became the first to be recovered by Americans after being spotted in the water off San Pedro, California, on November 4.[16]. They said a second factor was the lack of information about whether the balloons even reached America and caused damage. The winter was the dry season, during which forest fires could turn very destructive and spread easily. Prompted by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese developed the balloon bombs as a means of direct reprisal against the U.S. mainland. Japanese fire balloon reinflated at Moffett Field, California, after it had been shot down by a Navy aircraft January 10, 1945. National and state agencies were placed on heightened alert, and forest rangers were asked to report sightings or finds. Elsie, the unborn baby and the five children were killed almost instantly by the blast. Over the years, the explosive devices have popped up here and there. [2] In 1933, Lieutenant General Reikichi Tada began an experimental balloon bomb program at Noborito, designated Fu-Go,[a] which proposed a hydrogen balloon 13 feet (4.0m) in diameter equipped with a time fuse and capable of delivering bombs up to 70 miles (110km). Hundreds were discovered up and down the west coast, and even as far inland as Indiana and Texas. Three hundred sixty-one of the balloons have been found in twenty-six states, Canada and Mexico. Hitching a ride on a jet stream, these weapons from Japan could float soundlessly across the Pacific Ocean to their marks in. Is Sherman dead? Seeking to deepen their newly planted roots, the Mitchells invited five children from their Sunday school classall between the ages of 11 and 14on a picnic amid the bubbling brooks and ponderosa pines of nearby Gearhart Mountain on the beautiful spring day of May 5, 1945. Citing the need to prevent panic and avoid giving the enemy location information that could allow them to hone their targeting, the U.S. military censored reports about the Japanese balloon bombs. Between November 1944 and April 1945, more than 9,000 incendiary "balloon bombs" were launched by Japan during the war in hopes of sparking fear, chaos and forest fires in the Western U.S. On Nov. 3, 1944, the first of more than 9,000 bomb-bearing balloons were released. During World War II, the military thought the winds could save them once again since its scientists had discovered that a westerly river of air 30,000 feet highknown now as the jet streamcould transport hydrogen-filled balloons to North America in three to four days. On Nov. 3, 1944, Japan unleashed some 9000 balloon bombs over a five-month period, all destined for mainland over the Pacific. The dastardly . Military officials began to piece together that a strange new weapon, with markings indicating it had been manufactured in Japan, had reached American shores. The closest the balloons came to causing major damage was on March 10, 1945, when one of the balloons struck a high tension wire on the Bonneville Power Administration in Washington. [9] Sand from the sandbags was studied by the Military Geology Unit of the United States Geological Survey, revealing mineral and diatom compositions that corresponded to Ichinomiya. And thats really what the Japanese people went through., In August of 1945, days after Japan announced its surrender, nearby Klamath Falls Herald and News published a retrospective, noting that it was only by good luck that other tragedies were averted but noted that balloon bombs still loomed in the vast West that likely remained undiscovered. Can we bring a species back from the brink? [40] As predicted by Imperial Army officials, the winter and spring launch dates had limited the chances of the incendiary bombs starting forest fires due to the high levels of precipitation in the Pacific Northwest; forests were generally snow-covered or too damp to catch fire easily. They were developed in strict secrecy by the Japanese military as its naval fleet suffered a crushing blow in 1944 and could no longer strike the United States. In 1987, a group of Japanese women who were involved in Fu-Go production as schoolgirls delivered 1,000 paper cranes to the families of the victims as a symbol of peace and forgiveness, and cherry trees were planted around the monument on the fiftieth anniversary of the incident in 1995. Additional launches followed in quick succession. According to a Dec. 14, 1944, newspaper article in the Thermopolis Independent Record, three men and a woman at the Ben Goe Coal mine west of Thermopolis saw a parachute lit up by flares. Sightings of the airborne bombs began cropping up throughout the western U.S. in late 1944. Yet overall, the military concluded that the attacks were scattered and aimless. The design was tested in August 1944, but the balloons burst immediately after reaching altitude, determined to be the result of faulty rubberized seams. At the same time as Bly residents were absorbing the loss they had endured, over the spring and summer of 1945 more than 60 Japanese cities burned including the infamous firebombing of Tokyo. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and National Geographic Traveler. The final balloon design was 33 feet (10m) in diameter, and had a gas volume of 19,000 cubic feet (540m3) and a lifting capacity of 300 pounds (140kg) at operating altitude. After lumbering up a one-lane gravel road, Mitchell parked his sedan and began to unload picnic baskets and fishing rods as Elsie, five months pregnant, and the children explored a knoll sloping down to a nearby creek. This discovery greenlighted the mass production of 10,000 balloons in preparation for the winter winds of 1944 and 1945. After each question they answered yes. . Atmospheric uncertainty made for an uncontrolled attack. In November 1953, a balloon bomb was detonated by an Army crew in Edmonton, Alberta, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. ( looking east from Nebraska Highway 27) War, World II. Is Eddie dead? The Japanese balloon bomb, in all its terrible splendor. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp conditions, causing only minor damage and six deaths in a single civilian incident in Oregon in May 1945. In the late 1980s, University of Michigan professor Yuzuru John Takeshita, who as a child had been incarcerated as a Japanese-American in California during the war and was committed to healing efforts in the decades after, learned that the wife of a childhood friend had built the bombs as a young girl. The balloons weren't designed to navigate themselves and that's part of the wonder of this Japans offensive. "balloon bomb") deployed by Japan against the United States during World War II. Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, "Japan's Secret WWII Weapon: Balloon Bombs,", "Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America,", Fu-go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America. Prompted by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese developed the balloon . The balloons sailed nearly 10,000 km eastward across the Pacific . It is estimated . Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. Experts estimate it took between 30 and 60 hours for a balloon bomb to reach North America's West Coast. The alleged balloon scrap could be evidence of a unique weapon in modern warfare: the Japanese Balloon Bomb. The first one Americans found was Nov. 4, 1944, floating in the ocean 66 miles southwest of San Pedro, Calif. That one was believed to have been a test balloon launched before the main launch. The Fourth Air Force, Western Defense Command, and Ninth Service Command organized the "Firefly Project" with a number of Stinson L-5 Sentinel and Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft and 2,700 troops, including 200 paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, who were stationed at critical points for use in firefighting missions. US Army Air Corps Chinese surveillance balloon's flight over the US has highlighted the military. In March 1945, one balloon even hit a high-tension power line and caused a temporary blackout at the Hanford, Washington, plant that was producing plutonium that would be used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki five months later. The memorial commemorating the six Oregonians killed by a Japanese "Fu-Go" balloon bomb during WWII near Bly in the Mitchell Recreation Area. Each carried two incendiaries and a 33-pound antipersonnel bomb. Reverend Archie Mitchell was about to yell a warning when it exploded. An analysis of the ballast revealed the sand to be from a beach in the south of Japan, which helped narrow down the launch sites. [46] A nearby ponderosa pine still bears scars on its trunk from the bomb's shrapnel. About 1.5 metres in diameter, the mysterious metal sphere has been the source of intense speculation online Police and residents in a Japanese coastal town have been left baffled by a large iron . All rights reserved. The plugs were connected to three redundant aneroid barometers calibrated for an altitude between 25,000 and 27,000 feet (7,600 and 8,200m), below which one sandbag was released; the next plug was armed two minutes after the previous plug was blown. There were barely any morekozotrees, which was needed for the paper production. First, the discovery of a large balloon miles off the California coast by the Navy on November 4, 1944. In February 17, 1945, the Japanese used the Domei News Agency to broadcast directly to America in English and claimed that 500 or 10,000 casualties (the news accounts differ) had been inflicted and fires caused, all from their fire balloons. Known as "fire balloons," these balloons were reportedly filled with hydrogen and carried bombs that weight as much as 33 pounds. The balloons not only required engineering acumen, but a massive logistical effort. February 3, 2023 at 3:02 p.m. EST A Japanese bomb-carrying paper balloon in North America in 1945. On Paper Wings shows them meeting face-to-face in Bly decades later. In 1984, the Santa Cruz Sentinel noted that Bert Webber, an author and researcher, had located 45 balloon bombs in Oregon, 37 in Alaska, 28 in Washington and 25 in California. They designed balloon bombs to be launched from Japanese submarines on the West Coast of America. Early U.S. theories speculated that they were launched from German prisoner of war camps or from Japanese-American internment centers. Throughout the years, Japan's balloon bombs have continued to be discovered. Your Privacy Rights These animals can sniff it out. Not only were the minister and his wife, Elsie, expecting their first child, but he had also accepted a new post as pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in the sleepy logging town of Bly, Oregon. hide caption. I ran up and they were all lying there dead. Lost in an instant were his wife and unborn child, alongside Eddie Engen, 13, Jay Gifford, 13, Sherman Shoemaker, 11, Dick Patzke, 14, and Joan Sis Patzke, 13. Upon retrieval, they noted its Japanese markings and alerted the FBI. Suitable launch conditions were expected for only about fifty days through the winter period of maximum jet stream velocity. The project was stopped by 1935 and never completed. In the "Sunset Project" initiated in early April 1945, the Fourth Air Force attempted to detect the radio transmissions emitted by tracking balloons using sites in coastal Washington; 95 suspected signals were detected, but were of little use for interception due to the relatively low percentage of balloons with transmitters, and observed fading of the signals as they approached the coast. Feb. 21, 2023 4:50 AM PT In late 1944, the Japanese military began launching 9,000 unmanned bomb-carrying balloon across the Pacific to bombard the West Coast. According to the two men interviewed, the Army had stopped the balloon program because of a lack of resources. In January 1955, the Albuquerque Journal reported that the Air Force had discovered one in Alaska. I ran to one of the cars and asked is Dick dead? But they have never been bitter over it., These loss of these six lives puts into relief the scale of loss in the enormity of a war that swallowed up entire cities. The reverend would later describe that tragic moment to local newspapers: Ihurriedly called a warning to them, but it was too late. At night, cool temperatures risked the balloon falling below the currents, an issue that worsened as gas was released. Please be respectful of copyright. Japans bizarre WWII plan to bomb the continental U.S. by high-altitude balloons claimed its first and only victimsan Oregon church group in 1945. The balloon bombs were 70 feet tall with a 33-foot diameter paper canopy connected to the main device by shroud lines. [37], By mid-April 1945, Japan lacked the resources to continue manufacturing balloons, with both paper and hydrogen in short supply. Winds of war: Japans balloon bombs took the Pacific battle to the American soil. The dastardly contraption was one of thousands of balloon bombs launched toward North America in the 1940s as part of a secret plot by Japanese saboteurs. The campaign was halted, with no intention to revive it when winds restarted in late 1945. The balloons, or "envelopes", designed by the Japanese army were made of lightweight paper fashioned from the bark of trees. "The control frame really is a piece of art. At least eight were found in the 1940s, three in the 1950s, two in the 1960s, and one in the 1970s. On the morning of Saturday, May 5, 1945, Rev. In 1944, the Japanese military tried to instill panic in the U.S. by launching thousands of bombs carried across the Pacific by means of hydrogen-filled balloons. It was scary," said Johnston in a 2017 interview. The . When you talk about something like that, as bad as it seems when that happened and everything, I look at my four children, they never would have been, and Im so thankful for all four of my children and my ten grandchildren. Their launch sites were located on the east coast of the main Japanese island of Honsh. They also confirmed that there was no plan for biological or chemical warfare with the balloons. [39] The Fu-Go balloon was the first weapon system to have intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time. The carriage was attached and the guide ropes were disconnected. They also concluded that the main damage from these bombs came from the incendiaries, which were especially dangerous for the forests of the Pacific Northwest. What if we could clean them out? During the Second World War the Japanese conceived . 7777https://youtu.be . The trip took several days. In Bly, Oregon, a Sunday school picnic approached the debris of a balloon. In the end, there would be about 300 incidents recorded with various parts recovered, but no more lives lost. For two years the military produced thousands of balloons with skins of lightweight, but durable, paper made from mulberry wood that was stitched together by conscripted schoolgirls oblivious to their sinister purposes. Carried by wind currents, the balloon bombs traveled thousands of miles to western U.S. shores. The bomb recently recovered in British Columbia in October 2014 "has been in the dirt for 70 years," Henry Proce of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told The Canadian Press. [24] The most tactically successful attack took place on March 10, 1945, when one of the balloons descended near Toppenish, Washington, colliding with power lines and causing a short circuit that cut off power to the Manhattan Project's production facility at the state's Hanford Engineer Works. Though relatively simple as a concept, these balloonswhich aviation expert Robert C. Mikesh describes in Japans World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America as the first successful intercontinental weapons, long before that concept was a mainstay in the Cold War vernacularrequired more than two years of concerted effort and cutting-edge technology engineering to bring into reality. The joint army-navy research into this operation came to an abrupt halt, however, when every submarine was recalled for the Guadalcanal operation in August 1943. Special thanks also for the use of their music to Jeff Taylor , David Wingo for the use of "Opening" and "Doghouse" - from the Take Shelter soundtrack, Justin Walter 's "Mind Shapes" from his album Lullabies and Nightmares . As reports of isolated sightings (and theories on how they got there, ranging from submarines to saboteurs) made their way into a handful of news reports over the Christmas holiday, government officials stepped in to censor stories about the bombs, worrying that fear itself might soon magnify the effect of these new weapons. Using 40-foot-long ropes attached to the balloons, the military mounted incendiary devices and 30-pound high-explosive bombs rigged to drop over North America and spark massive forest fires that would instill panic and divert resources from the war effort. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. The balloons, each carrying an anti-personnel bomb and two incendary bombs, took about seventy hours to cross the Pacific Ocean. But Klamathites were reminded that it still can have a tragic sequel.. [32] Starting in February 1945, Japanese propaganda broadcasts falsely announced numerous fires and an alarmed American public, further declaring casualties in the hundreds to thousands. The silence was successful, as the Japanese only heard about one balloon incident in America, through the Chinese newspaperTakungpao. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? [21], Two weeks after the discovery of the B-Type balloon off San Pedro, an A-Type balloon was found in the ocean off Kailua, Hawaii, on November 14. Archie and Elsye had taken them on a Sunday school picnic up on Gearhart Mountain. Named Fu-Go, the so-called 'balloon bombs' were 10 metres (33 feet) tall, with the ability to carry four 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices plus one 33-pound (15 kg) anti-personnel bomb. [11] The original proposal called for night launches from submarines located 600 miles (970km) off of the U.S. coast, a distance the balloons could cover in 10 hours. But forensic geology, then in its infancy, was able to pinpoint Japan as the point of launch. Jeff Quitney/YouTube Follow me @NPRHistoryDept; lead me by writing to lweeks@npr.org. More than 9,000 of these incendiary weapons were launched from Japan during the war via . The initial reaction of the military was immediate concern. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. A one-hour activating fuse for the altimeters was ignited at launch, allowing the balloon time to ascend above these two thresholds. In the 1940s, the Japanese were mapping out air currents by launching balloons attached with measuring instruments from the western side of Japan and picking them up on the eastern side. Welcome to Wonderhussy Adventure #464Date of Adventure: 8/25/20In WWII, the Japanese sought to weaponize wildfire by sending bomb-laden balloons across the P. Heres why each season begins twice. The propaganda largely aimed to play up the success of the Fu-Go operation, and warned the US that the balloons were merely a prelude to something big.. Most of the balloon bombs. On November 3, 1944, Japan launched its first series of Fu-Go Weapon balloon bombs as a way of "invading" the US from afar and creating havoc among its citizens and government.. They each carried four incendiaries and one thirty-pound high-explosive bomb. While most are likely lost in the ocean, residents of the Pacific Northwest are advised to be careful when exploring uncharted territories. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. Between 1944 and 1945, the Japanese military launched more than 9,000 bomb-rigged balloons across the Pacific, counting on the wind to carry them over American soil, where they could cause damage. A relief valve was added to allow gas to escape when the envelope's internal pressure rose above a set level. [10], Engineers next investigated the feasibility of balloon launches against the United States from the Japanese mainland, a distance of at least 6,000 miles (9,700km). They called it Operation Fu-Go. Another bomb was espied a few days later near Kalispell, Mont. Between then and April 1945, experts estimate about 1,000 of them reached North America; 284 are documented as sighted or found, many as fragments (see map). The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. It was a tragic thing that happened, says Judy McGinnis-Sloan, Betty Mitchells niece. Map of Fu-Go incident locations in North America. The balloon bombs have been so overlooked that during the making of the documentary On Paper Wings, several of those who lost family members told filmmaker Ilana Sol of reactions to their unusual stories. From November 1944 to April 1945, Japan's Special Balloon Regiment launched 9,000 high altitude balloons loaded with bombs over the Pacific Ocean. Since the 13th century when a pair of cyclones foiled the fleets of Kublai Khans Mongol invaders, the Japanese had long believed that the gods had dispatched divine winds, called kamikaze, to protect them. [7], Also in September 1942, Major General Sueki Kusaba, who had served under Tada in the original balloon bomb program in the 1930s, was assigned to the laboratory and revived the Fu-Go project with a focus on longer flights. Vincent Bud Whitehead, a counter-intelligence agent at Hanford, recalled chasing and bringing down another balloon from a small airplane: I threw a brick at it. It's. (Rev. A self-destruct system was added; a three-minute fuse triggered by the release of the last bomb would detonate a block of picric acid and destroy the carriage, followed by an 82-minute fuse that would ignite the hydrogen and destroy the envelope. Close to 300 were either found or observed in the U.S., according to Atlas Obscura. Photograph courtesy of Karen Melkonian. But the eyewitness accounts of Archie Mitchell and others would not be widely known for weeks. Just after the war, reports came in from far and wide of balloon bomb incidents. In subsequent weeks, the strip's storyline saw the protagonists fight monster vines that sprang from seeds the balloon was carrying, created by an evil Japanese horticulturalist. On November 3, 1944, Japan releasedfusen bakudan, or balloon bombs, into the Pacific jet stream. After several hundred tests, the Japanese released the first balloon bomb, named fugo, or "wind-ship weapon," on November 3, 1944. Fu-Go ([], fug [heiki], lit. Ultimately, Fu-Go was a military failure. Once aloft, some of the ingeniously designed incendiary devices weighted by expendable sandbags floated from Japan to the U.S. mainland and into Canada. One of these bombs killed six . Privacy Statement They appeared from northern Mexico to Alaska, and from Hawaii to Michigan. Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images. Word of the Bly, Oregon, deathsand the strange mechanism that had killed them was overshadowed by the dizzying pace of the finale in the European theater. Arakawa further found that the strongest winds blew from November to March at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour (320km/h). Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. On May 22, the War Department issued a statement confirming the bombs origin and nature so the public may be aware of the possible danger and to reassure the nation that the attacks are so scattered and aimless that they constitute no military threat. The statement was measured to provide sufficient information to avoid further casualties, but without giving the enemy encouragement.