ROOTS-L Archives

From: Steven Dhuey <>
Subject: Japanese balloon bombs
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 22:27:22 -0600

>One more thing on dog tags. I was living in Seattle Wash during the second
>world war. All the children in the schools were issued dog tags to help with
>the identification in case of an attack by the Japanese. There were a
>couple of times that their planes did make it to drop bombs on the state. Of
>course it did not make the news like things do now, it would have been bad
>for morale.

No Japanese bombers dropped bombs on the U.S. mainland. You are perhaps
recalling the balloon bombs launched from Japan, some of which did make it
to America's West Coast, and in one instance did kill a group of civilians
led by a minister on a picnic outing in Oregon on May 5, 1945. The minister
survived, but his pregnant wife and five children were the only fatalities
of enemy attack on the U.S. mainland in World War II. All the other balloon
bombs either went into the Pacific, landed but did not explode, or exploded
without harming any person.

As weaponry, the balloon bombs were quixotic at best, and were perhaps
intended more to destabilize morale on the West Coast than anything else,
and were a sign of Japan's mounting desperation towards the end of the war.

For a fascinating postscript, 42 years after the event, see:
http://amaterasu.math.orst.edu:8080/~sharpej/bly.txt

-Steve

This thread:

• Japanese balloon bombs by Steven Dhuey <>