Fu-Go! Japanese Balloon Bombs and the Story of the Lethal Air Attack on Oregon During World War Two

 Archie Mitchell just turned twenty-seven years old four days ago.  Archie is the young, popular Pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, an evangelical Bible based non denominational congregation located in Bly, Oregon.  Archie and his wife Elsie are expecting their first child in just a few months.

Bly, Oregon, is a very tiny hamlet of under 500 souls.  It is located in the southern part of the state, nestled among dense forests, and is only about an hour or so drive from northern California.

It is May 5, 1945.  The Second World War, after nearly six long years, is finally coming to a merciless and protracted end.  In two days Nazi Germany will surrender on all fronts to the allied armies thereby effectively ending World War Two in Europe.  

But the Empire of Japan, the nation which first brought the United States into the war nearly four years earlier with the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor will hold out against the onslaught of American might for four more bloody months.  Only in September of 1945 will Japan’s suicidal dream of an Asiatic empire finally be obliterated, once and for all, by the twin atomic mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But though the war still rages across the Pacific Ocean on May 5, 1945, just outside the tiny hamlet of Bly, Oregon, the sun is bright and warm; there’s not a cloud in the springtime sky and Archie and Elsie Mitchell’s thoughts are a million miles away from World War Two.

All of that is about to change in an instant on this fateful day.

Archie and Elsie Mitchell Wedding Photo

The Mtchell’s are driving out into the Oregon wilderness to a place called Gearhart Mountain for a picnic.  They have brought along five students, four boys and one girl, from the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church Sunday school.

With the birth of their first child only a few short months away, Archie and Elsie think it will be great parenting practice for them to spend so much time out in the country with the Sunday school kids.  The young couple couldn’t be more excited about the upcoming birth of their first child.

As Archie, Elsie and the five Sunday school kids drive along the narrow road up the side of Gearhart Mountain, their path is unexpectedly blocked by some fallen trees.

Archie pulls the station wagon over to the side of the road.  It is only a short walk to the picnic site and the group decides to head the rest of the way on foot.  Archie drops Elsie and the kids off and then turns around and heads a short way back down the road to find a place to park the car.

As Elsie and the kids wait on the side of the road and examine the ground for a good picnic spot, they notice a strange, shiny almost metallic large balloon, deflated and draped over the trees.  The kids run up to grab the tin foil balloon.  One of the boys kicks a pile of debris lying on the ground and, in a flash, it explodes!

The four boys: Edward Engen (13), Jay Gifford (13), Dick Patzke (14) and Sherman Shoemaker aged only 11, die instantly.

Hearing the explosion from a few hundred yards away, Archie Mitchell stops the car, gets out and sprints up the mountain.  When he arrives back at the scene there's another, smaller secondary explosion, among the metallic wreckage of the giant balloon.  Archie sees his pregnant wife Elsie, literally engulfed in flames.  He struggles to pull her from the flaming wreckage of the balloon, but she succumbs to her injuries before emergency personnel arrive on the scene.

A young girl from the Sunday school Joan Patzke (13) whose older brother Dick died instantly in the Balloon Bomb explosion will survive the blast and be rescued, only to die in hospital several days later.

This tragic incident in the woodlands outside the small town of Bly, Oregon, is the only time American civilians have ever been killed on the soil of the mainland United States by an enemy air attack.

Elsie Mitchell, and the Sunday school children from Bly, Oregon were the victims of a Japanese Fire Balloon Bomb--called Fu-Go in Japan.

A Fu-Go, or Japanese Balloon Bomb was a large hydrogen filled hot air balloon, that carried several approximately 30 pound highly explosive and incendiary bombs hanging off of its gondola.  

These devices were designed as a cheaply made, and easily deliverable terror weapon by Japan at the end of World War Two.  Fu-Go balloon bombs were launched from mainland Japan and carried across the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean on the air currents of the jet stream to the continental United States.

In total, between November 1944 and May of 1945, the Empire of Japan, launched 9300 Fu-Go balloon bombs into the jetstream in its terror attacks on the mainland United States.

Of these 9300 balloon bombs only about 300 were ever actually sited flying over land in the United States.  Several were seen flying over Canada and one was seen in the skies above Mexico.  Japanese balloon bombs were reported to have made landfall in over a dozen states and the wreckage of Japanese balloon bombs was turned over to American military personnel as far away from the west coast as Detroit, Michigan!

In March of 1945 American fighter aircraft shot down several Fu-Go’s in the skies above Santa Monica, California.  Fu-Go’s were also sighted hovering in the clouds above downtown Los Angeles.

Though Japan had intended their balloon bombs to cause fear and panic among American civilians in the waning months of the Second World War, the weapons proved largely ineffective and most were destroyed by extreme weather systems after being caught up in the jet stream.

Japanese Fu-Go early 1945

For their part, Japanese propaganda broadcast in newsreels, over radio and reported in print that the Fu-Go terror bombing campaign was a stunning success and caused great forest fires, fear, panic and casualties in the tens of thousands among the American public.

The American Office of Censorship, a wartime branch of the United States Government that controlled what was reported on about the war by civilian press agencies, sent messages to all newspapers and radio stations across the country requesting that they, “Make no mention of balloon bomb incidents.”

Surprisingly, most media outlets, not wanting to spread fear among members of the American public and thereby aid the Japanese war effort, complied with the Office of Censorship’s request.  Though balloon bombs were seen in the skies above the United States by many Americans, it was never directly stated in either print, or on radio, that the source of the mysterious balloons was mainland Japan.

For most Americans, the true origins of the Japanese Balloon Bombs, or Fu-Go, remained a mystery.  Most people believed that the Fu-Go was a form of domestic terrorism, launched by espionage agemts from clandestine locations with the United States, or that they had been deployed from enemy submarines stationed just off the coast.  It was hard for many people, even after the war, to believe that the Japanese could have created a weapon capable of covering such massive distances.

Despite their propaganda effort, after April of 1945 with American forces steadily drawing nearer to their homeland; their cities lying in ruins and with money and natural resources scarce, the Japanese finally abandoned the Fu-Go balloon bombing campaign.

Though the Japanese military in its own official report fully acknowledged that Operation Fu-Go had been, “a total fiasco”, it should be noted that the Japanese Balloon Bombs of 1944-45 were the first weapons capable of intercontinental range ever deployed in warfare.  It was not until the development of the American B-36 “Peacemaker” long range bomber in the 1950’s, almost a full decade after the Second World War, that another weapns system with intercontinental range would be developed.

The B-36 Peacemaker (fortunately for the human race) was never used for its intended purpose of intercontinental nuclear strategic bombing during the height of the Cold War.  In fact, it would not be until 1982 during The Falkland Islands War that a military attack was launched on an enemy from a greater distance (Great Britain to Argentina) than the Fu-Go Balloon Bombs that were launched from mainland Japan to the continental United States during World War Two.

B-36 "Peacemaker" Bomber

Perhaps, the Balloon Bombs of the Japanese Empire were nothing more than an interesting side note to the most destructive conflict in human history: the Second World War.  However, for Archie and Elsie Mitchell and for the families of the five young Sunday school children that were killed on American soil on May 5, 1945, the Fu-Go or Japanese Balloon Bombs of World War Two were the most sinister and destructive implements ever devised by man.

Today a small marker, called the Mitchell Monument stands on the site of the attack deep in the forests of southern Oregon.  As recently as the summer of 2019 the remnants of a Japanese Balloon Bomb were discovered by a hunter and his dog in the woodlands of the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Quite possibly, many more Balloon Bombs from nearly eighty years agao remain yet to be discovered on the American mainland and in Canada.  We can only hope that the Fu-Go of World War Two have claimed their final victims.