In the last desperate year of WWII, the Japanese attacked the American continent with thousands of large balloons carrying bombs.
Using the newly discovered Jet Stream, the first such weapon was launched from Honshu, directly beneath the Jet Stream, on 3 Nov 1944. U.S. officials at first thought the balloons were errant weather balloons. Between that November and the following July, some 9000 bombs were launched and 268 of them making it to North America.
Imagine! These balloons were constructed by Japanese school children to paste together paper balloons in seven factories near Tokyo. By 1944, Japan was suffering acute wartime material shortages.
The only American fatalities were the Mitchell family. On Sunday, May 5, 1945, the Rev. Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife, Elsie, were taking five of their Sunday School students on a picnic near their home in Bly, Oregon. As Mitchell was parking his car, he heard his wife call out: “Look what we found! It looks like some kind of balloon!” Before Mitchell could warn his wife to keep away, the bomb went off. Elsie and four boys were instantly killed and one girl died later from her injuries. The above image is of a memorial to those dear Americans.
The really sad part of this tale is that the War Department had known about these balloons since December, 1944, but had its Office of Censorship keep information out of the news in order not to cause panic. That press blackout was lifted o May 22 in an effort to prevent further injuries or deaths.
Sources: Charles Apple’s Further Review in The Spokesman Review newspaper, 4 May 2025; The Pacific Northwesterner, Summer 1976, article by Randall A. Johnson: image from Wikipedia.
