During the final months of World War II, Japan developed a new weapon that it hoped would create psychological terror, death, and destruction within the continental United States, and while those lofty goals were not achieved the weapon did lead to the only deaths in the continental US directly caused by the fighting.
Named Fu-Go, or fire balloon, the Japanese launched an estimated 9,000 balloons from mainland Japan toward mainland America. The intention was for the balloons to explode upon reaching America, causing forest fires that would require the diversion of wartime resources. Of the thousands of balloons launched, only a few hundred are known to have landed in America. Most were quickly discovered, thereby averting any real damage.
In May 1945 however, one balloon bomb tragically killed a pregnant woman, Elsie Mitchell, and five Sunday school students out for a fishing trip. The detonation caused the only World War II deaths on continental U.S. soil as a result of enemy action.
Today, a memorial 13 miles northwest of Bly, Oregon marks the location of the deadly explosion. The Mitchell Monument remembers those who lost their lives that tragic day. A nearby Ponderosa Pine stands defiant, showing the bomb damage it too suffered that day. Sadly, Elsie’s husband, Archie Mitchell, who survived the explosion, would never see the dedicated memorial. By the time the memorial was unveiled in 1950, he was working as a missionary in Asia.
As an odd, and fairly tragic side note, in 1962 Archie mysteriously disappeared in Vietnam, just as America’s involvement in that country was escalating. His whereabouts remain a mystery to this day.
from Atlas Obscura http://atlasobscura.com.feedsportal.com/c/35387/f/665719/s/449fab3a/sc/10/l/0L0Satlasobscura0N0Cplaces0Cjapanese0Eballoon0Ebomb0Ememorial/story01.htm
