Canada Under Attack (23 page)

The first fire balloon was launched on November 3, 1944. It is unknown if that balloon reached North America, but the first discovery of a fire balloon was made the next day in the Pacific Ocean, 102 kilometres southwest of San Pedro, California, by the United States Navy. In Canada the first word that the Japanese were targeting the Canadian West arrived with a collection of balloon fragments discovered by civilians near Stoney Rapids, Saskatchewan. The Allies were stunned when the first discovery was made. They were completely unaware of the jet stream and it seemed inconceivable that these devices — whose markings clearly identified them as Japanese — could have made the journey from Japan, more than 8,000 kilometres away. Instead, they focused their attention on finding a potential launch site for the fire balloons somewhere in the waters off the North American coastline. Some experts speculated that the balloons had been launched on North American beaches by landing parties from Japanese submarines. Other, wilder, theories suggested they had been launched from German prisoner of war camps or even Japanese-Canadian internment camps.

The only thing the Allies were certain of was that one of the most pressing threats from the balloons was the threat to Canadian and American morale and their potential to boost sagging morale in Japan. Therefore, it was imperative that the Canadian military ensure that no word of the balloon attacks reached the Japanese. The Canadian government also recognized the possibility of mass hysteria if the public learned of the hazards that were sailing across the ocean toward them. They immediately requested that the media refrain from publishing any news of the balloons, a request that the patriotic wartime media quickly agreed to. In an almost unprecedented move, generals from each of the Allied commands in Canada, the United States, and Mexico met with the various media outlets to brief them. Through official channels, the fire balloons would be known only under the code name “paper.” The media blackout was so successful that only one news report filtered out to the Japanese.

But while the media blackout served its purpose in minimizing Japanese claims of success and preventing mass hysteria, it also had other, more dangerous, effects. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived to take custody of a downed balloon north of Delburne, Alberta, in March 1945, they discovered that souvenir hunters had been there first and stripped it of its most critical parts. In another incident that same month a sheepherder was taking his flock to another field when he heard a loud explosion. Later that day he returned to find his cabin completely demolished. A few days later a nearby rancher heard his cattle bawling and found them tangled around what he thought were the remnants of a weather balloon. He tossed the balloon and threw what he assumed to be its recording device in the toolbox of his truck. A few weeks later the annoyed farmer dropped the “recording device” on the desk of the local RCMP officer and let him know what he and the weather service could do with it. The perplexed RCMP officer called a superior, who calmly informed him that the toolbox likely contained a bomb that would level his office. The device was contained and a controlled explosion revealed that the expected bomb was no longer attached to it. Authorities concluded that the payload had actually landed on the sheepherder's cabin.

On May 5, 1945, a minister and his wife took five children from their church on a Sunday picnic in the mountains outside of Lakeside, Oregon. As the children and the minister's wife scurried ahead looking for the perfect picnic spot they stumbled upon a balloon stranded high in a tree. Intrigued, the children tugged on its ropes, hoping to dislodge it. Suddenly, an explosion ripped through the woods. The minister raced toward his wife but it was too late. She and all of the children perished. The public was initially told that they were victims of an unidentified explosive device, but one month later the American military finally officially admitted to the existence of the fire balloons. A few weeks later the grieving minister was finally able to tell his story to the
Seattle
Times
. “As I got out of my car to bring the lunch, the others were not far away and called to me they had found something that looked like a balloon,” the Reverend recalled, “but just then there was a big explosion. I ran up there — and they were all dead.”
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While media silence greeted the arrival of the fire balloons in North America, across the Pacific the Japanese were loudly lauding their new weapon. Through the Japanese media they claimed to be wreaking great havoc with the balloons and even claimed to be on the verge of sending manned balloons to invade North America. In a Japanese propaganda program, broadcast in English on February 17, 1945, the Japanese military claimed to have set western North America afire and inflicted 500 casualties with their fire balloons. These broadcasts were sent to North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and China and all repeated a similar theme: the fire balloon strategy was working. One broadcast even claimed that several million airborne troops would soon land in North America. Although it was doubtful that the fire balloons could carry those kinds of troops, both Canadian and American officials did fear that the balloons might be used like they had been during the Sino-Japanese War experiments, to transport biological warfare agents to North America. Those who studied the balloons believed that such uses were at least theoretically possible, but there is no evidence that they were ever used for that purpose. Squads of 4-H Club members and others were organized to act as decontamination squads, and farmers were told to watch for and report any signs of illness in their livestock. In an effort to aid in locating balloons, some trappers, ranchers, and rural postmasters were also informed of the existence of the fire balloons and asked to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious.

The RCMP and the Royal Canadian Air Force joined forces in investigating balloon sightings with an eye to determining their purpose and their source. In one instance, near Minton, Alberta, they tracked a balloon as it repeatedly touched down and rose again. On one touchdown, the balloon dropped a bomb that was discovered and reported by two children. The RCMP and RCAF continued to track the balloon through reported sightings and damaged fences, finally discovering it almost intact in a farmer's field near Minton. It proved to be a valuable find, providing intelligence on the type and size of the explosive and incendiary bombs attached to the balloons. It also provided evidence in the form of the sand from several intact ballast bags discovered with the balloon. Geologists at Canada's National Research Council worked with the United States Geological Survey to analyze the sand and eventually proved that it had been taken from beaches in Japan, stunning Allied military experts with the news that the balloons had indeed sailed all the way from Japan, and allaying public fears that Japanese submarines were lying in wait off Canada's shores.

The researchers were eventually able to pinpoint the origin of the sand to beaches on Honshu, northeast of Tokyo, and the origin of the balloons to three separate sites near those beaches. American fighter jets were scrambled and eventually took out two of the factories. At home, once the Canadian military had discovered the origin of the balloons they were left wondering what to do with them. Most of the time they were too late to do anything — reported sightings were often hours old before they reached the appropriate personnel and the balloons were either already lost or had landed. Planes were scrambled with orders to shoot down the balloons but official records of those sorties are very brief. Apparently, with orders to maintain silence about the balloons in mind, many of the official memos merely record the pilot's altitude and the fact that the pilot shot down “paper.”

While the RCAF tackled balloons that were found in the air, other military personnel were dispatched on foot to recover downed balloons. In one instance, a Captain Charles East took his snowshoes into the Saskatchewan bush to locate a balloon that had been reported tangled in a tree. He walked slowly around the tree, binoculars in hand, to try to determine if the bombs dangling from the balloon might still detonate. While he was walking, his snowshoe became caught on something and he tugged to free it. Finally he looked down and saw an object sticking out of the snow. It was an unexploded bomb and he had almost tripped it.

Incendiary balloon partially spread out with the top of balloon in the foreground.

Despite the threats posed by unexploded bombs, and Japanese claims to the contrary, the picnickers in Oregon were the only casualties of the Japanese fire balloons. While the balloons may have caused small bush fires, most of the bombs and incendiary devices failed to ignite or cause the devastation they were intended for. Launched during the wet spring and fall months, the balloons did not spark any largescale fires. On almost every level, the project was an unmitigated failure. Of the over 9,000 fire balloons launched by Japan, less than 1,000 reached their targets in North America. The media blackout ensured that there was no public panic; in fact, the blackout was so successful that few in Canada know of the existence of the balloons even today.

There were several reasons for the failure of the Japanese fire balloon invasion. Clearly the season chosen for the attack played a role. So did the device's design. Historians point out a significant flaw in the ballast dropping mechanism. It was powered by a battery that was contained in a plastic box filled with antifreeze. The antifreeze solution proved to be too weak and the batteries froze as they reached the highest altitude. Many of the balloons were subsequently forced down into the Pacific by the weight of their ballast bags as the battery and the ballastdropping mechanism failed.

The Canadian public was officially informed of the existence of the fire balloons at the end of May 1945. Although Canadian officials could not have known, the Japanese had actually ended their fire balloon campaign over a month before. The last fire balloon was shot down in British Columbia on April 20, 1945, by an RCAF Kittyhawk, after two children saw it descending through the clouds. But the public would continue to report balloons sailing overhead for many months to come. Most were likely sightings of the planet Venus turned into something more ominous by a nervous public. The RCAF, unwilling to take chances, continued to send out aircraft to pursue these phantom fire balloons sightings, much to the chagrin of its pilots, one of whom lamented in his pilot log, “Three scrambles today. Two of them chasing planets again. Surely someone at control should know sufficient astronavigation to plot the visible planets in the day time and not scramble 40,000' ceiling mosquitoes thousands of light-years up.”
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