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On this Day: Japanese WWII ‘Balloon Bomb’ Kills Six in Oregon
May 05, 2008 12:10 AM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
On May 5, 1945, a woman and five children died after discovering a bomb that had drifted by balloon from Japan to Gearhart Mountain, Oregon.
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The Reverend Archie Mitchell was on an outing with his pregnant wife, Elsie, and five local youngsters when they found the odd-looking balloon. He “watched in horror” when it exploded as Elsie and the children dragged it out of the woods, the U.S. Air Force reported.
In a little-known 1944 campaign, Japan released 9,000 bomb-laden balloons that floated across the Pacific and were intended to explode in America, causing forest fires and panic.
“Each balloon was armed with one 15 kilogram antipersonnel bomb and two incendiary devices,” and they “looked like giant jellyfish,” a book on the Fu-Go campaign says.
Japan said it was retaliation for the 1942 U.S. “Doolittle raid,” in which American pilots bombed Tokyo from aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
As the “Fu-Go”—Japanese for “fire bombs”—landed, the U.S. government tried to hide the information from the American public, hoping the Japanese would abandon the campaign as ineffective. The press largely cooperated with the government’s secrecy efforts.
The unsuspecting Elsie Miller paid a price for that secrecy, but the strategy worked and Japan soon scrapped production of the bombs.
“Had this balloon weapon been further exploited by using germ or gas bombs, the results could have been disastrous,” according to Bookmice.net.
Even today, most Americans are unaware of the Fu-Go bombing, and an Air Force Web site says “dangers of the balloon bomb still may exist” because “hundreds were never found.”
In a little-known 1944 campaign, Japan released 9,000 bomb-laden balloons that floated across the Pacific and were intended to explode in America, causing forest fires and panic.
“Each balloon was armed with one 15 kilogram antipersonnel bomb and two incendiary devices,” and they “looked like giant jellyfish,” a book on the Fu-Go campaign says.
Japan said it was retaliation for the 1942 U.S. “Doolittle raid,” in which American pilots bombed Tokyo from aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
As the “Fu-Go”—Japanese for “fire bombs”—landed, the U.S. government tried to hide the information from the American public, hoping the Japanese would abandon the campaign as ineffective. The press largely cooperated with the government’s secrecy efforts.
The unsuspecting Elsie Miller paid a price for that secrecy, but the strategy worked and Japan soon scrapped production of the bombs.
“Had this balloon weapon been further exploited by using germ or gas bombs, the results could have been disastrous,” according to Bookmice.net.
Even today, most Americans are unaware of the Fu-Go bombing, and an Air Force Web site says “dangers of the balloon bomb still may exist” because “hundreds were never found.”
Headline Link: Killer balloons
According to the U.S. Air Force, Elsie Mitchell and the five children with her were the only people reported to have been killed by any of the bombs. The bombs were found in 17 states, with the most recent one found in 1955 in Alaska, “its payload still lethal after at least 10 years of erosion.” Although much time has passed without incident, the Air Force warns that “dangers of the balloon bomb still may exist. Hundreds were never found and may still be detonated with the slightest contact.”
Source: U.S. Air Force
J. David Rogers of the University of Missouri-Rolla says U.S. B-29 bombers destroyed the plants that produced the balloons in April 1945, although the Japanese also halted the project around the same time because they thought the bombs were not reaching America, due to a successful U.S. “strategy of not reporting on the balloon bombs’ effectiveness.” Although only 285 of the 9,000 bomb-laden balloons launched by Japan were documented to have reached North America, “experts believe that probably closer to 1,000 made it across the Pacific.”
Source: Missouri University of Science and Technology
Video: ‘Doolittle Raid on Tokyo’
A video clip of U.S. newsreel footage from the 1940s reports on the April 18, 1942 so-called Doolittle Raid, in which U.S. bombers led by U.S. Captain James Doolittle took off from aircraft carriers in the Pacific in a surprise attack on Tokyo.
Source: YouTube
Background: The Fu-Go bombings and the U.S. raid on Tokyo
The Web site Bookmice.net provides drawings of the structure of the balloons, photographs and newspaper articles from the period. The site quotes the book, “Japan’s World War II Bomb Attacks on North America”: “The concept of balloon bombs might have changed the course of the war in favor of the Japanese had it been pursued with more vigor and tenacity. … Had this balloon weapon been further exploited by using germ or gas bombs, the results could have been disastrous to the American people.”
Source: Bookmice.net
Marshall Stelzriede’s Wartime Story, a Web site about the World War II experiences of B-17 navigator Marshall Stelzriede, provides news articles covering the balloon bombs during the war. For example, a May 22, 1945 article from Tacoma, Washington’s News Tribune writes, “Japanese long range balloons have made sporadic attacks on the western part of North America during the last several months, the army and navy reported today.”
Source: Marshall Stelzriede’s Wartime Story
The Doolittle Raid is believed to have sparked the Japanese Fu-Go balloon retaliation. The Doolittle Raid was a risky American mission using bombers to take out key targets in Tokyo, after taking off from short aircraft carrier decks in the darkness, with minimal fuel. Seen as American revenge for Pearl Harbor, the raid was “a tremendous boost to American morale, which had been severely tested by four long months of defeat and loss.”
Source: The USS Enterprise CV-6 Association
Related Topics: Other lesser-known World War II attacks on the United States
The balloon bombs are not the only World War II occurrence largely unknown by Americans today. In 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, which “went into the history books as the only hostile shelling of a military base on the U.S. mainland during World War II and the first since the War of 1812.” Then, a few months later, Japanese planes dropped bombs into Oregon, causing forest fires on two separate occasions.
Source: Oregon State Archives
A 2006 article in America in WWII magazine describes the highly effective German U-boat presence on America’s Atlantic coast during World War II. “Ship by sinking ship, the Nazis achieved a victory over the United States comparable to and even more devastating than the one the Japanese had enjoyed at Pearl Harbor a few weeks earlier. … Meanwhile, the American people were not being told how close they were to disaster.”
Source: America in WWII
Reference: Balloon wars in history
“On a Wind and a Prayer,” a 2005 documentary, describes the history of balloon warfare and the Fu-Go weapons. The site includes a video trailer for the film, facts about the Japanese campaign, and the story of an Austrian balloon attack on Venice during the 1848 Venetian independence revolt. “Although the bombs did little physical damage, their psychological effect was immense, causing the Venetians to capitulate on the 24th of August, 1849.”
Source: On a Wind and a Prayer
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