Posted on 02/05/2023 9:46:04 AM PST by aspasia
By November 1944, almost in a cruel and desperate afterthought to what seemed a lost cause, balloons launched from Japan and carrying explosive and incendiary bombs drifted east on the jet stream to the United States. Once again, the goal was to start forest fires and wreak devastation. On December 6 after a "mysterious explosion" in Wyoming, officials found balloon parts and bomb casing fragments from what had been a 33 pound high explosive bomb. During the next several months, Japan launched over 9,000 balloon bombs resulting in over 342 incidents registered throughout western United States and Canada. Oregon alone counted 45 balloon incidents. While they varied in size and design, many balloons measured about 100 feet in circumference and about 33 feet in diameter. The ingenious design helped them drift along the newly discovered fast moving jet stream at an average elevation of 30,000 feet.
(Excerpt) Read more at sos.oregon.gov ...
I was listening to a radio broadcast from Dec 7 1941 and the first report of note was a freighter was torpedoed off the west coast. Later, the reports from Pearl Harbor came in.
The psychological effect was devastating.
“Page not found.”
V2 rockets killed about 9,000 civilians in England. It cost the Germans about 12,000 Jewish slaves.
Japanese Bombed Here!
Field review by the editors.
Brookings, Oregon
The exact spot where a Oregon was bombed in World War II lies deep in a National Forest. On September 9. 1942, less than a year after the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, a lone Japanese floatplane slipped in over the coastal U.S. mainland and delivered a 170-lb. thermite bomb in to the forested mountains.
The bomb exploded, leaving a small crater and circle of charred trees. Unusually wet weather conditions prevented the fire from spreading. The site was eventually overgrown and forgotten, then rediscovered in 1972.
Japanese Bombing Site Trail sign.
Today, the site features interpretive signs, along with trees planted as an apology by the Japanese Imperial Navy pilot, Nobuo Fujita, who visited decades later.
Your GPS might tell you the site is not far from downtown Brookings, but that’s misleading.
To get to the remote location, visitors need a vehicle with reasonably high clearance, and patience to navigate 12 miles of scenic serpentine National Forest roads — unpaved and marked as the Japanese Bombing Site Trail.
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/14872
“I have read that they actually thought and tested to send fleas infected with the plague.”
Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night.
They were going to hit southern California (They had already done it China.) but the war started to heat up close to Japan so they cancelled it.
Listen to it live as it happened. Warning: Major rabbit hole
I always think the mispronunciation of “O-How-Oo” instead of “O-Wah-Hoo”
Thanks! Those items reminded of the times I spent with my grandparents during WWII.
My maternal granddad was a news addict. He took 2 daily newspapers, had the shop radio on during the work day.
Then, he bought a really good am/fm radio for their family room. A whip antenna provided great reception after dark.
He and my grandmother ate their dinners and breakfasts in their family room listening to the radio in WWII.
They had a son in the First Cav, and many grandson’s/nephews in the Navy, Army and Army Air Corp.
Their son and one of the grandsons fixed up an outdoor SW antenna system, not seen from the road. Then, at night they often could get East Coast Cities/NY/DC and later West Coast news after sunset.
They were basically told to only listen to their Short Wave. Then, not talk about stuff they heard on it, unless it was also on the radio news or in a newspaper. Their short wave radio was kept an basically unused bedroom and then stored out of sight when they didn’t listen to it.
My grand dad had cousins living the UK, in London, Hastings and Cornwall. Any letters from these UK relatives were heavily censored by the Civil Service people.
My grandmother kept all the letters my dad sent home from the war. I have them in a trunk. He had access to a camera during the war. I have the pictures he took and put in his WW2 scrapbook.
“My grandmother kept all the letters my dad sent home from the war. I have them in a trunk. He had access to a camera during the war. I have the pictures he took and put in his WW2 scrapbook.”
My mother and her 3 sisters lived into their mid to late 80’s. Supposedly, they were to divide up the tons of photos from post WWI to this century. That fell into untouched stacks after each one left this orb.
I literally sneaked about 2 inches of photos from my Mother’s stacks. I helped her to make her final move before she went to a retirement home. So, I sneaked some photos away.
A sibling got a big stack and has done nothing with her stash. Fortunately, our mother, was big on writing on the back of family photos, dates and whom. So we know basically who, when and where.
My wife has even more photos as her bros took the few they wanted. Her mother took photos of everyone and every happening. She had divided them into 3 stacks, one for each adult child. No one else is really interested in either family re photos/genealogy.
One of my maternal nieces and I are the only family members into genealogy. Since her kids became teens, her additions to our 2 families have slowed down to a trickle. My sibling and my wife’s siblings do/care basically nothing re the genealogy and their picture stacks.
I traced my family back to a descendent who died in prison for being involved with the Knights Templar. My goal when I retire is to scan everything that I have.
BTW we use familysearch.org.
Secretary of State, that is.
Another balloon.
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We have a good number of letters sent from Europe by my hubs Uncle...the letters are very generic...he got hit in Germany on a bombing mission...landed in Sweden and died there from injuries.... About a month after he had married an English woman.
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