Posted on 01/20/2015 2:27:36 PM PST by Theoria
Seven decades after thousands of “balloon bombs” were let loose by the Imperial Japanese Army to wreak havoc on their enemies across the Pacific, two forestry workers found one half-buried in the mountains of eastern British Columbia.
A navy bomb disposal team was called and arrived at the site Friday in the Monashee Mountains near Lumby, B.C.
“They confirmed without a doubt that it is a Japanese balloon bomb,” said RCMP Cpl. Henry Proce.
“This thing has been in the dirt for 70 years .... There was still some metal debris in the area (but) nothing left of the balloon itself.”
The forestry workers found the device Wednesday and reported it to RCMP on Thursday.
Proce, a bit of a history buff himself, accompanied the men to the remote area and agreed that the piece appeared to be a military relic.
The area was cordoned off and police contacted the bomb disposal unit at Maritime Forces Pacific.
It was a big bomb, Proce said. A half-metre of metal casing was under the dirt in addition to approximately 15 to 20 centimetres sticking out of the ground.
“It would have been far too dangerous to move it,” Proce said. “They put some C4 on either side of this thing and they blew it to smithereens.”
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army released more than 9,000 bomb-bearing balloons.
Assembled from bark and rice paper, in some cases by school children, the balloons were loaded with hydrogen and attached to a chandelier-type structure loaded with sandbags and incendiary bombs, said Andrew Burtch, director of research at the Canadian War Museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Ping.
The Canadians should send the bill to Tokyo.
I remember these balloons. Our teachers announced these bombs and instructed us to look for them. If we saw something in the sky we were to report it to our teachers.
Lucky for those forestry guys that they recognized its potential danger.
Canada Ping!
A shame that it had to be blown up.
I guess that may have been the official end of WW2 in N. America.
And I had no idea that a balloon bomb made it to Grand Rapids, Michigan! It has never been mentioned if that info is correct.
Someone in japan needs to apologize for this
Moore will chime in that it should be exploded by hand, with a hammer and not at a distance
I was hoping there would be a picture of it.
Thanks!
Very excited to learn about this.
Apparently, the word “smithereens” is a highly technical term which means that “It blowed up real good.” :=)
They still give warnings in schools at some point about Japanese balloon bombs here in Nevada, but I don’t think any have been found in the state.
I think the Nevada Dept. of Wildlife still has some sort of information about their danger for hunters and hikers.
Something to think about, I guess. Hikers and hunters continue to find crashed airplanes in the Sierra range that the state hadn’t yet got on record of the location of the debris.
Thanks for the post.
Nah. It’s not like there’s not unexploded bombs all over Japan and Germany. I read an article not long ago about a farmer who blew himself up plowing up a bomb.
May 5, 1945: Japanese Balloon Bomb Kills 6 in Oregon | WIRED
1945:: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. They are the only World War II U.S. combat casualties in the 48 states.
[Search domain www.wired.com] wired.com/2010/05/0505japanese-balloon-kills-oregon/
Bly is just a few miles from my house. There’s a memorial there and you can see the shrapnel damage on the pine trees.
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