JAPANESE ATTACK MAINLAND AMERICA WITH BALLOON BOMBS

By Beth Gibson (Memories by Duane L. Hamilton)

When Duane Hamilton's family moved to the area in 1943, they didn't have an inkling of the excitement that would soon follow. Mr. Hamilton tells about his early memories:

"In 1943, my family moved from a ridge-farm in the Missouri Ozarks to a wheat ranch in Horse Heaven Hills a few miles southeast of Hanford. I entered junior high in Kennewick. Across the river, the Pasco Naval Air Station trained combat pilots and air crews. "The Saints," a VC-27 Squadron that accounted for 68 Japanese aircraft destroyed, trained there.

"Kennewick, Pasco, and environs were very aware of the Navy. Civilians worked on base and sailors worked part-time off base. Three worked regularly on their days off at the ranch where we lived. The sailors were young and felt very comfortable with civilians. An ensign from Louisiana was scoutmaster of a Kennewick Boy Scout troop and took us on a tour of the flight line. We were allowed to crawl through the radio operator's station up into the ball turret of a TBF Avenger torpedo plane. The scoutmaster was a F6F Hellcat pilot and started one for us. The shot-gun explosion and the puff of smoke that preceded the cranking of the engine was a thrilling demonstration.

Probably the most important secret on the base was the radar equipment in some of the planes. We saw the tiny TV-like antennas on the wings, but didn't know what they were. Our host said they were secret and that was enough. The censors airbrushed them from photos released to the public.

"[There was] Nothing like the Navy openness at Hanford. We didn't know what was happening ‘up there.' The workers there had a totally different mind-set. The Hanford workers had high-paying jobs, low living expenses, and draft deferments. They could be fired for simply asking a question and signed an agreement not to talk to each other or their families about their work. A card they carried listed what they could talk about. The ‘culture of secrecy' was established.

"One Spring day in 1945, my dad and I delivered a truckload of wheat to the Kennewick Grange. Navy fighters over Kennewick were usual, but that day was different. They were very high, circling, diving, and climbing almost directly overhead. Today it seems odd the people at the grange would know they were flying about a Japanese balloon bomb without some sort of air-raid warning. It wasn't [odd] then.

What the Hamiltons didn't know was that the Japanese had launched a balloon bomb barrage on the North American continent. Their goal had not been to kill people but to start forest fires that would destroy property and divert manpower from the war effort.

The balloons were launched from three sites on the island of Honshu, chosen because of nearby rail lines and favorable terrain. There was also less chance that malfunctioning balloons would damage Japanese property. Of more than 9,000 balloons launched, about 1,000 reached North America. Mr. Hamilton continues: After the war, I read in various magazines about Japanese balloon bombs. In Oregon one killed five people. An obscure article about Hanford mentioned a Japanese balloon bomb had struck a power line to Hanford. I experienced the great ‘aha!' and my memory was vindicated. I assumed it was the incident I saw--the Navy must have shot it down onto the power line.

The balloon bomb Mr. Hamilton remembers came down on a power line somewhere between Bonneville Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. Elaborate safety measures had been taken to prevent accidents in the reactor piles, and uninterrupted cooling water was essential. When the power was interrupted by the balloon, the safety mechanisms were triggered. Since the systems had never been tested, this incident gave everyone confidence in its safety, although it took three days to get the piles back to full capacity. This was the only American plant shut down by enemy action during World War II.

Years later, the balloon bombs were on Mr. Hamilton's mind again, when he went on a bus tour of Hanford in 1994.

"A month or so later, I read of an exhibit in the Boise, Idaho Museum of History commemorating that state in World War II. The account described a map of Japanese balloon-bomb landings in the Northwest. For me it was a ‘must see.' I wanted to know about the bomb over Kennewick. I was shocked to find on the exhibit map a great number of landings, not just in eastern Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, but in Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, central Mexico, eastern Canada, and Alaska. The map was from Silent Siege II, by the Webb Research Group, in Medford, Oregon. I was very excited and ordered its revision, Silent Siege III, a large volume listing 312 findings of Japanese balloon bombs.

"According to Silent Siege III, the Hanford Patrol had been alerted in 1944 and had seen several balloon bombs over or near the site. There were four sighted near Hanford on March 10, 1945--a Saturday. One of those caused the three-day shutdown. It [the balloon] came down to the northwest, near Yakima. I lived to the southeast. The prevailing wind is from the southwest. In the Spring it is often directly from the south. So there was on way it could have been what I saw. One found near Ephrata had been shot down. It might or might not be the one I saw the Navy planes tracking. At least fifteen balloon bombs came down, passed near, or drifted over Hanford in 1944 and 1945.

Other places in Washington that balloons were found include Spokane, Prosser, Asotin, Ephrata, Goldendale, Puyallup, Satus Pass, Toppenish, Cold Creek, Everett, Colville, Walla Walla, Wapato, and Moxee. The first balloon bomb was spotted by a Navy plane on 4/11/44 near San Pedro, California. They found a large piece of rubberized silk with a heavy undercarriage. The undercarriage had a small radio transmitter attached. There wasn't much concern until a second one was found two weeks later. The first balloon to land on the continent was discovered near Thermopolis, Wyoming on 12/6/44. This one event was printed in the papers, and the Japanese heard about it. It was enough to prove their idea successful. It also prodded government agencies to do something, and all agencies, even forest rangers, were ordered to report any balloon sightings. But the government didn't want to panic Americans, nor did it want the Japanese to know their bombs had actually reached the United States. So all newspapers and radio stations were asked not to release news of the balloons, and they all complied. Unfortunately because of the censorship, the public was unaware of the danger and the five people of which Mr. Hamilton speaks, died as a result. After that, the ban was lifted and Americans were warned of the danger.

The military adopted several strategies to fight the bombs. They considered the most serious threat to be from incendiary devices, so the "Firefly Project" began. Airplanes and paratroopers were stationed at critical points to fight fires. The threat of bacteriological warfare was considered the next most serious threat, which initiated the "Lightning Project." This consisted of alerting the Department of Agriculture, health and agricultural officers, veterinarians, agricultural colleges, and even 4-H clubs to be on the lookout for any strange diseases in livestock or crops. Decontamination chemicals and sprays were shipped to strategic points in the western U.S. The Sunset Project focused on experimenting with recovered balloons to test how they could be detected by radar. Radar stations were set up along the Washington coast to try to detect incoming balloons while still over the ocean. The Japanese stopped using the bombs after April 1945, when American raids disrupted the supply of hydrogen, so the Sunset project never became operational.

Thank you Mr. Hamilton for sharing your memories with our readers!

FROM THE COURIER, January 1997
Official Publication of the
EAST BENTON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
205 Keewaydin Drive P.O. Box 6964 Kennewick, WA 99336-0602
Telephone: (509) 582-7704