Fu-Go: Fire Balloon - U.S. Response
By spring 1945 U.S. authorities had a solid understanding of the balloons themselves, even if the strategic objectives of the larger campaign remained unknown or at least open enough to preclude definite conclusions. Under the directorship of Vannevar Bush, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (osrd) accordingly formed a special committee to compile a strategic overview of the offensive and its practical capabilities. Analyses by USGS scientists of microfossils and heavy minerals from the sand in the balloons’ 7-pound ballast bags enabled these specialists to locate the launch sites on southeastern Honshu for aerial attack.
Almost from the moment the first balloons began arriving in North America in late 1944, Brigadier General P. E. Peabody of the Military Intelligence Service closely monitored reports of intercepted radio transmissions over the Pacific. He guessed that at least some of the signals came from airborne balloons. In March 1945, the month when the number of balloons landings spiked, he noted thirty-four radio transmissions had been detected by radio operators on the Pacific coast. The recorded frequencies and pulse rates matched the known sound signatures of other confirmed balloons.
The United States responded by detailing troops to fight forest fires, distributing decontamination materials to farmers and other citizens, monitoring their homes and animals, experimenting with captured balloons, plotting Japanese radio signals, establishing a radar-warning line along part of Washington’s coast, and flying intercepts by day- and night-fighter aircraft.
The Japanese expected about 10 percent of their weapon balloons to reach North America. U.S. and Canadian personnel recovered parts or all of 285 of them during the war, and another 40 in postwar years, most from locations between 40 and 50 degrees north latitude and from the West Coast eastward to the 105th meridian.
The War Department sought to end these attacks by discovering and bombing the balloons’ fabrication and launching sites. In January 1945, the War Department asked the USGS to have its military geologists try to determine the location of the sands used as ballast for the balloons. In the USGS Military Geology Unit (MGU), Julia Gardner and Kenneth and Katherine Lohman analyzed mollusks, diatoms, and foraminifers (no corals appeared), and Clarence Ross examined the hypersthene-rich heavy minerals in ballast from two balloons that grounded in Alaska and Wyoming.
Their results and similar studies by Canadians, who found blast-furnace slag, indicated that the beach sands came from Shiogama (a flight-following station northeast of Sendai) and Ichinomiya (south of Ohara on the Chiba Peninsula southeast of Tokyo). Although Ichinomiya lacked a hydrogen-generating plant, it was one of the three launch areas on the coast of southeastern Honshu. As the jet stream’s strength declined, the Japanese ceased launching weapon balloons in late April.
Aside from an article in Newsweek in January 1045, the U.S. Office of Censorship successfully stopped all but one other public mention of the balloons.
The B–29 raids on Tokyo on April 12-13 destroyed many of the balloon-production facilities and the other two hydrogen-generating plants, along with key parts of the uranium-isotope-separation facilities of physicist Nishina Yoshio. The Japanese knew by radio-tracking and a notice in a Wyoming newspaper, repeated by the Chinese, that their balloons were reaching North America but not where, in what numbers, or the degree of their physical and psychological impacts. They also did not know that their weapon diverted some Allied personnel and resources from the combat theaters. Specifically, the balloons imposed a 3-day delay on the plutonium reactor at the Hanford Engineer plant in Washington, when, on March 10, shrouds landed on powerlines, started two minor fires elsewhere.
In 1934, a proposal was made to US Forest Service to use aircraft and parachutes to transport firefighters to wildland fires. in 1935 the US Forest Service established the Aerial Fire Control Experimental Project. During the summer of 1940, US Army Major William Lee observed some of the smokejumper training being conducted in Montana. Major Lee, now known as the "father of airborne troops," incorporated many smokejumper techniques into the establishment of Army Airborne doctrine.
The supply of qualified personnel available for smokejumping had been greatly depleted by the personnel demands of World War II. Only five smokejumpers returned from the previous year; 33 additional jumpers were hired and trained for the summer of 1942, but only a few had any wildland fire experience. The personnel shortage reached a critical stage by the spring of 1943. Only five jumpers were available, including the instructor. The problem was soon solved, however, when 70 members of the Civilian Public Service (C.P.S.) were trained as smokejumpers. The CPS was made up of conscientious objectors to the military draft. The use of CPS personnel by the smokejumper project continued until the end of the War. In 1946, with the end of World War II, the Civilian Public Service smokejumper program was discontinued.
The early 1940s began an era that sparked movements within the Black community to eliminate segregation and bring about improved social conditions. Black leaders believed that the armed forces could be used as a means to promote these needed social changes. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting government contractors from employment discrimination based on race and color. From the Tuskegee Airmen, the Golden 13 and Montford Point to the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the 6888th Central Postal Battalion and the Red Ball Express, all ‘firsts’ in African American uniformed service helped drive progress to equality.
An all Black paratroop infantry unit was formed during World War II that was used as a means to appease the Black community. This unit was formed at Fort Benning, Georgia, initially as a test platoon ad eventually grew into the largest battalion in the United States Army. Although Black Americans has a legacy of demonstrated bravery in combat throughout history, White Americans has relegated Blacks to performing menial tasks in service units to perpetuate stereotypical beliefs. The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion challenged these limitations and became one of the first elite all-Black units in the Army.
To combat the threat of attack to Western forests by Japanese fire balloons, members of the US Army's All-Black 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion were trained in timber jumping and firefighting. Black troops during the 1940s were initially relegated to jobs such as cooks or stewards because it was believed they couldn't handle the training required to be part of the elite airborne divisions.The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was activated as a result of a recommendation made in December 1942 by the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, chaired by the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy.
The battalion did not serve overseas during World War II. However, Instead, on May 5, 1945, the unit received new orders to travel to Pendleton Air Base, CA, on a "highly classified" mission known as Operation Firefly - to combat forest fires ignited by Japanese balloons carrying incendiary bombs.
The 555th PIB's "highly classified" mission was to respond to these reports of suspicious fires and to be prepared to move into any area where there were suspected Japanese bombs, cordon off the area, locate and dispose of the bomb.
To do this, the unit would have to learn how to jump into heavily wooded areas and to use a parachute designed for the terrain. Another challenge they faced was Pendleton AB, which was in Umatilla County, a region heavily influenced by the Ku Klux Klan and its commander, a segregationist Army officer. Despite these obstacles, the entire battalion became qualified as "smoke jumpers" or airborne firefighters by mid-July 1945.
By March 1945, the balloon offensive was entering its fifth month, each having experienced an increase in the number of balloon landings over the month before. Following the slow pace of recoveries in November and December 1944, January witnessed an uptick to 18 balloons. February saw 54, most in the Pacific Northwest.
The expected Japanese fire balloon menace did not materialize, but the 300 paratroopers were used as suppression crews on many large fires during the severe 1945 fire season. Stationed at Pendleton Field, Oregon, with a detachment in Chico, California, unit members courageously participated in dangerous fire-fighting missions throughout the Pacific Northwest during the summer and fall of 1945, earning the nickname "Smoke Jumpers" in addition to "Triple Nickles."
The men of the 555th PIB were pioneers not only in desegregating the Army, but in establishing techniques and perfecting equipment still in use by the U.S. Forest Service.
Once this bizarre form of attack was recognized by U.S. military forces, strict censorship was exercised on press and other media outlets, which were forbidden to publish any information about the silent attacks against which there was little defense.
In February 17, 1945, the Japanese used the Domei News Agency to broadcast directly to America in English and claimed that 500 or 10,000 casualties (the news accounts differ) had been inflicted and fires caused, all from their fire balloons. The propaganda largely aimed to play up the success of the Fu-Go operation, and warned the US that the balloons were merely a “prelude to something big.”
The first newspaper to get the scoop on the balloon story was not the New York Times, Washington Post, or some other established daily with an international reputation, but theWestern News, a weekly published in Libby, Montana. On 14 December 1944, just three days after the discovery in Kalispell, the paper ran a front-page story under the headline “Jap Balloon Found in Timber.” A rural mailman whose route included the area where the woodcutters made their discovery brought word to Libby of a strange paper balloon large enough to carry up to eight Japanese soldiers.
This lack of public awareness led directly to the only combat deaths to occur in the continental United States during the entire war. On 05 May 1945, a group of hikers came across a crashed fu-go balloon near Bly, Oregon, and in the process of trying to determine what the device was they caused it to explode, killing twenty-six year-old Elsie Mitchell and five children.The censorship that resulted in the Oregon deaths also had a more positive effect by denying the Japanese any knowledge about whether the balloons were successfully crossing the ocean.
Their deaths caused the military to break its silence and begin issuing warnings to not tamper with such devices. They emphasized that the balloons did not represent serious threats, but should be reported. In the end, there would be about 300 incidents recorded with various parts recovered, but no more lives lost.
The Japanese Government formally apologized for the Oregon civilian deaths of WWII in 1987.
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