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Early on the morning of February 25, 1942, citizens of Los Angeles and surrounding communities were awakened by the clattering sound of antiaircraft fire. For 11 weeks, or ever since the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor the previous December, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and other cities of the West Coast had been on military alert. Radar stations reported unidentified aircraft, and nightly blackouts were ordered from the San Joaquin Valley to the Mexican border.
Now, with the cannonading of antiaircraft guns and the wailing of sirens, citizens of Los Angeles were having their worst fears confirmed—Japanese bombs were raining down upon them.
The next day, newspapers reported in banner headlines about the “air raid” that had taken place.
There was, however, no air raid. What had happened that February morning was a by-product of the
Fear and hysteria that gripped many parts of the West Coast in the early months of World War II. Radar personnel thought they had detected enemy planes. Antiaircraft gun crews, who poured more than 1400 shells into the sky that night, thought they had heard them.
This is not to say that the mainlands of the United States and Canada were not subjected to aerial bombardment during World War II. Indeed, they were. But when the bombs fell—and they did fall—the craft that delivered them were not detected by radar. No antiaircraft fire greeted them. Nor did newspapers report the bombings. The bombing of America was, in fact, one of the best-kept secrets of World War II.
In April 1942, only four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, American forces stunned the Japanese with a bold assault on their homeland. Thirteen two-engined B-25s, taking off from the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet, dropped 500-pound bombs on Tokyo and on military bases in the area. Three more B-25s, also from the Hornet, struck at other Japanese industrial centers.
The attack was so unexpected that it threw the Japanese nation into a state of shock. It was an embarrassment to the Japanese military leaders, who had promised the citizens their home islands would never be attacked.
In the weeks that followed, Japanese leaders sought some dramatic way of striking back. The Japanese knew about a terrible fire that had ravaged northwestern Oregon in the 1930s, laying to waste hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland and
AMERICAN BOMBING RAID OF JAPAN IN 1942, LAUNCHED FROM AIRCRAFT CARRIER HORNET, MADE JAPANESE MILITARY LEADERS HUNGER FOR REVENGE. (U. S. Navy)
Threatening several towns. Japanese military leaders made plans to trigger similar fires by dropping incendiary bombs. Such fires, they believed, would cause panic among the American people.
In August 1942, the Imperial Navy ordered one of its unusual aircraft-carrying submarines into position off the southwestern coast of Oregon. On September 9 of that year, and again on September 29, a small bombing plane, launched from the deck of the submarine, made several bombing runs over Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest.
The plane reached its target each time, dropped two incendiary bombs, and returned to the submarine. But because the woodlands had been soaked by rain, the bombs did no real damage. Only one of them actually started a fire and it was quickly doused by forest rangers.
By this time, the tide of war in the Pacific had begun to turn against the Japanese. In June 1942, the Battle of Midway had taken place, a great naval victory for the United States. Japanese losses at Midway included four big aircraft carriers and a cruiser.
With their forces now on the defensive, Japanese naval officials decided not to risk their aircraftcarrying submarines in the heavily patroled coastal waters of the United States. But the Japanese did not abandon their plan to bomb the American mainland. They merely began to consider other methods.
During the 1920s, Japanese scientists had begun studying the jet stream, the narrow stream of strong westerly winds located six to twelve miles above the ground. In gathering information about the jet stream, the scientists would send high altitude balloons into the air currents, and then attempt to monitor the flight of these balloons as they drifted across the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes the balloons would travel all the way to the United States before coming to earth.
Japanese scientists learned a great deal about the jet stream from the weather balloons. The country’s military experts decided this knowledge could be put to use on behalf of the war effort.
Major General Sueki Kusaba was put in charge of a program to use high altitude balloons to carry bombs to targets in the United States. He quickly lined up the support of the nation’s scientists, uni-
¦%.
JET STREAM WINDS, BLOWING FROM WEST TO EAST, CARRIED BALLOONS AND THEIR BOMB CARGOES TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
COOL AIR
Versity professors, and balloon manufacturers.
Out of the development program came two types of balloons, one made of paper, the other of rubberized silk. The paper balloons were manufactured in two sizes. A paper balloon that was 45 feet in diameter was developed for use in the summer months. A smaller balloon, 30 feet in diameter, was designed for winter winds. The balloon of rubberized silk was about the same size as the smaller of the paper balloons. The balloons were to be filled with hydrogen.
The balloons were designed to drift along at altitudes of more than 30,000 feet, where they would
Be mere specks in the sky. Even on the clearest days, they would be out of range of fighter and interceptor aircraft. Even radar would not be able to detect them.
Five bombs in a cluster were suspended from each balloon. After the balloon had been in the air a sufficient amount of time to reach the United States—about 72 hours, according to most estimates—a timing device would release the bombs, which would explode on impact. Another timing device would trigger an explosion that would destroy the balloon. Thus there would be no evidence to indicate where the bombs had come from.
General Kusaba targeted the balloons on the line that cuts across the heart of America marking the 40th degree of north latitude. Redding, California; Reno and Ely, Nevada; Provo, Utah; and Denver, Colorado, are among the cities that lie close to the line. It also forms the Nebraska-Kansas border. Of course. General Kusaba realized that the balloon bombings would not occur exactly on the line, but north or south of it.
It was not until November 1944 that the Japanese were ready to launch their “windship weapon,” as they called it. By this time, the war was going very badly for them. American forces had taken many of Japan’s strongholds in the Pacific and had invaded the Japanese-held Phihppine Islands. Japan’s home islands were under constant attack by America’s B-29 bombers.
The bomb-carrying balloons represented the final effort on the part of the Japanese to stave off defeat. Between November 1944 and Japan’s surrender on
EACH BALLOON CARRIED CLUSTER OF FIVE BOMBS. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. (National Archives)
BALLOON PACKAGE ALSO INCLUDED TIMING DEVICE TO DETONATE BOMBS. (National Archives)
August 14, 1945, between 6,000 and 10,000 high altitude balloons, each carrying bombs, were released into the jet stream to be carried to the United States.
When the balloons started arriving, they triggered bewilderment rather than fear. One of the first balloons came down in a clump of trees on a ranch near Yerington, Nevada. The balloon itself was undamaged, but the bombs and the timing devices were missing.
The rancher, believing that the strange object might belong to the military, reported it to the Nevada Naval Ammunition Depot. Nobody there was interested. So the rancher cut up the balloon and made haystack covers out of it. Later, when mihtary experts became aware of what the balloon represented and showed up at the ranch to investigate, they were upset to learn what the man had done.
Another of the first balloons to arrive dropped its bombs near Thermopolis, Wyoming, the night of December 6, 1944. When people heard the explosion, they thought that an American plane had dropped a bomb by mistake. The Thermopolis Independent-Record declared: “A bomb so carelessly dropped. . . could have done extensive damage, and even might have hit the town. . .”
Fragments of the bomb were identified as being of Japanese manufacture. American military experts scratched their heads in disbelief. How could a Japanese bomb explode in Wyoming?
Later in December, parts of two damaged balloons were found in Alaska. On December 31, a balloon was found lodged in the top of a tree near Es-tavada, Oregon. It was salvaged by the Oregon State
Police, who turned it over to military authorities.
Late in the afternoon of January 4, 1945, a tremendous explosion rocked the home of a Medford, Oregon, woman. When she looked out the window she saw that a huge hole had been ripped in the yard not far from her house.
After a telephone call to nearby Camp White, the Army sent scores of soldiers to search the area. Local women spent most of the night making coffee and sandwiches for them. The soldiers recovered bomb fragments, which again were identified as having been manufactured in Japan.
The same day a balloon was recovered near Sebastopol, California, about 55 miles north of San Francisco.
Recovered balloons and their parts were sent to the Naval Research Laboratory at Anacostia, D. C., where scientists examined them. They then issued this report:
It is now presumable that the Japanese have succeeded in designing a balloon which can be produced in large numbers at low cost and which is capable of reaching the United States and Canada from the Western Pacific carrying incendiaries and other devices. It must be assumed that a considerable number are coming over.
Not long after the report was issued, an American fighter plane shot down a balloon near Alturas, Cahfornia. The balloon was recovered almost intact with its bombs attached. It was rushed to the Naval Air Station in Sunnyvale, Cahfornia, for study. There
ONE BALLOON WAS RECOVERED INTACT, REFILLED WITH HELIUM, AND TEST FLOWN. (National Archives)
The bullet holes were patched and the balloon was refilled with helium and test flown. Men kept a tight hold on the shroud lines so it would not sail away.
Within a four - or five-week period, military experts obtained evidence of nineteen balloon incidents in five western states, plus Hawaii and Alaska (which were not states at the time) and three Canadian provinces. There could be no doubt now—the American continent was under attack.
Since these bombs fell mostly in rural areas and during the winter and spring when wooded areas were snow-covered or wet from rain, they caused little damage. But wherever a bomb fell, people became jittery.
Although American intelligence experts realized the Japanese were sending the bombs, they did not know how to stop them. Reports of exploding bombs continued to be received from Oregon, Cahfornia, and Washington. Towns in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Utah also reported being attacked from the sky. Some balloon-bombs even traveled as far into the American heartland as Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. The balloon that journeyed the farthest reached Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The most unusual balloon recovery was made near Tremonton, Washington, by Sheriff Warren Hyde. As the balloon drifted down. Sheriff Hyde got a tight hold on the bomb package. A strong gust sent the balloon back into the air with Sheriff Hyde still holding on. He “flew” the balloon for several minutes before it drifted back to the ground again.
Early in May 1945, bombs that landed near. Bly, Oregon, resulted in tragedy. A minister’s wife and several of her Sunday-school students, picnicking in the woods on the slope of Gearheart Mountain, came upon a bomb cluster in a forest clearing. Someone went up to the package and started to tamper with it. There was a tremendous explosion. Six members of the picnic party, five of them children, were killed.
Military experts did all they could to keep the balloon bombings a secret. Newspaper and radio stations (there was hardly any television then) were asked to keep silent about what was happening—and they did.
Photographing the balloons was forbidden. One man who snapped a picture of a balloon near Bigelow, Kansas, had his film taken by the Army. Another man photographed bombs that landed near
Hyatt Lake, Oregon. The Army confiscated his film also.
Jerrine May, a young reporter for the Sentinel in Goldendale, Washington, learned from the local sheriffs office of a “strange object” that had fallen to earth outside of town. She drove out to see it and found a big balloon with sand bags and metal fittings attached. She photographed everything for her
BOMB “INCIDENTS” HAVE BEEN REPORTED FROM THESE AREAS OF UNITED STATES AND CANADA. (Neil Katine, Herb Field Art Studio)
Paper. When the Washington State Police found out what she had done, they allowed her to keep her film, but only after she promised not to use the photographs in her paper.
“Nothing ever appeared,” Ms. May once said. “A real scoop down the drain. But,” she added, “as a souvenir of the night’s escapade I did manage to snitch a little piece of the balloon.”
As a result of the government-imposed secrecy, the great majority of Americans never knew about the bombings until the war was over.
In addition, the Japanese Military High Command was never able to learn whether the bombs were reaching the United States. They began to question whether the project was worth the time, money, and manpower.
This feehng, plus the fact that factories making balloon parts were being destroyed by American bombing attacks, caused the Japanese to gradually shut down the balloon-bomb program.
Of the many thousands of balloons launched by the Japanese, a total of 329 are known to have fallen on 26 American states and the northern and western provinces of Canada during the war. Several bombs traveled as far south as Mexico. Oregon led all states in bomb incidents with 42.
Since the end of the war, 13 more balloons and their parts have been discovered. It is believed that hundreds more, still with their bomb cargoes, may he undiscovered in the forests and on the plains of the western half of the United States, a deadly peril to those who might come upon them.
World History
