A little too early for a Japanese Fire Balloon, they started in ‘45.
Yeah - and this occurred about 5 years before Flying Saucer-mania.
#4DBrow: re Japanese fire balloons. I just copied this at the National Archives, College Park, Md. the other day.
From Record Group, 160 (Army Service Forces), Entry 37, Box 10, 9th Service Command, A.G. Officer, Decimal File 383.4
Correspondence “acknowledgement of letter stating plans for Combating Effects of Japanese balloons”
- 5/05/45, Telephone Conversation between Major Poffenburg and Mr. Hankey re “Explosion of Japanese Bomb” near Bly, Oregon. Describes how picnickers from a church group “picked up, dropped or kicked a demolition bomb.”
Record No. 279, and
Record No. 271: another phone conversation transcribed listed the victims are:
Mr. John E. Tucker: “And the names of the persons who were killed. Mrs. Elsie Mitchell, 28. Also, an unborn child by Else Mitchell. Nex is Gene Patske, 12 years old, Richard Patske, 14 years, Sherman Shoemaker, 12 years, Eddie Engen, 13 years, Jay Gifford 12 years. All of Bly, Oregon.”
Japanese balloon fires, explosions, or droppings were found in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana, among other states.
These people were also casualties of war and should not be forgotten.