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Does anyone recall that the Japs sent air baloons carrying clay urns filled with fleas carrying plague over the USA? One was discovered by a family in Colorado, who opened it and they all died.

I hadn't heard that. The Japs did deploy flea bombs against the Chinese, however.

They also launched some 9300 balloon-born firebombs into the jet stream flowing across to North America, the intent being to ignite forest fires and cause general mayhem. The journey was expected to take three days. The balloons had a control system that vented hydrogen if the balloon got too high and cut loose ballast if it got too low and to release the payload after three days. The Japs expected about ten percent of the balloons to make it, and at least 300 did.

On March 10, 1945, one of the balloons caused a power outage affecting the Hanford nuclear reactor cooling system, but a backup system took over.

On May 5, 1945, another balloon caused the only fatalities of the war in the continental US. Elsie Mitchell and five children were killed when they came upon a balloon bomb while looking for a picnic spot in the Oregon woods.