OPERATION FU-GO

It was a glorious spring day on May 5, 1945 in Bly, Oregon. The Nazis were on the ropes and the war in Europe would end two days later. Reverend Archie Mitchell had just accepted an appointment as the pastor of the Christian Missionary and Alliance Church in Bly. He and his wife Elsie were excitedly expecting their first child. In celebration of their good fortune and in order to cement ties with their new parishioners, Rev, and Mrs. Mitchell took five 11 to 14-year old kids from the Sunday school class for a picnic on nearby Mount Gearhart.

Admist the bubbling brooks and ponderosa pines of the beautiful sylvan wilderness, 13-year old Joan Patzke found a strange dirty white sphere on the forest floor. Summoning the others, she shouted out that it appeared to be a balloon. While Rev. Mitchell was absorbed with unloading the car, Elsie and the children formed a tight circle around the object while gaping in curiosity. One child reached forward to touch it. Rev. Mitchell finally observed the tableau and shouted for everyone to withdraw. It was too late. The object exploded, killing Elsie and the five children. When a forest ranger finally came upon the scene, he witnessed the victims lying around the center of the blast like spokes on a wheel with Rev. Mitchell futilely attempting to beat out the flames on his burning wife with his bare hands.

This Sunday school group has the dubious distinction of being the only casualties of an aerial bombardment of the continental USA during World War II. The bomb was the culmination of Operation Fu-Go, where the Japanese launched over 9,000 balloons, each containing thirty pounds (14 kilograms) of explosives, into the jet stream with the intention that they would be carried across the Pacific Ocean into the United States and start forest fires. The balloons were constructed from paper made from mulberry wood, diligently stitched together by Japanese school girls into 30-foot (10-meter) wide spheres, and filled with hydrogen.

The chance of a particular balloon reaching North America and starting a fire was slim. Probably ninety percent of them crashed into the sea. The Pacific Northwest is not known as being an arid area, and often the woods are too moist to sustain a fire. However, balloons eventually landed all over the western states with some as far as Iowa and even Grand Rapids, Michigan. One balloon hit power lines and momentarily disabled the nuclear plant in Hanover, Washington, which was producing the plutonium to be unleashed ultimately on Nagasaki in the form of an atomic bomb.

The American military was not unaware of the Japanese threat and shot down several of the floating bombs. It intentionally did not inform the public in order to avoid panic. The press cooperated in spiking stories of the balloon landings, and citizens who discovered the grounded balloons generally respected the directives of the authorities (usually, the FBI) to keep quite about it. The residents of Bly dutifully obeyed orders to repeat the tale that the explosion was of "undetermined origin," as no one wanted the Japanese to know that any of the bombs had reached the country. A month later (a month too late for Rev. Mitchell's wife, unborn child, and Sunday school class), the authorities relented and suggested to the public that one should refrain from approaching large spherical paper objects.

Operation Fu-Go may still constitute a threat. In 2014, loggers near Lumby, British Columbia, found one of the balloons. Fortunately, they stepped back, and the Canadian authorities were able to destroy it with a controlled explosion,

For more information on the dreaded balloon bombs, please click on the History Channel website.