Japanese Balloon Bombs | The Strange Truth

By mid 1944, Japan is getting hit on a daily basis from B29 bombers. They are literally obliterating cities. Japan was dying, and Japan's only reaction to this is to strike back. Japan is faced with a serious problem: they can't develop a high-tech weapon. Our problems in the brain inside of the Japanese head, there are 70 million of these in Japan. But perhaps a low-tech weapon like a balloon could be launched against America.

A brain of thought in the modern way could be taught to use the latest modern weapons. They develop a technology that is absolutely brilliant, simple in its approach. But the technical ability of this bomb to be able to float to America and, on its way, be controlled by a series of sandbags gets it to its target. It is incredible. Someone had to sit down and run the numbers to come up with exactly how many sandbags, exactly how far they could project the balloon to move.

I find that to be pretty incredible. That same brain today remains the problem. Our problem: over a thousand were lodged. They went as far as Texas, and as long as they stayed airborne, they could carry great distances. So, depending on the wind and the altitude they maintained, they were falling all over western America.

In May of 1945, a minister, his wife, and five children from their parish were out on an outing near a town called Lake View, Oregon. The minister was parking the car; he let his wife out and the children. They went into the forest. He heard her exclaim, "Look what we've found!" and seconds later, by the time he got up there, his wife, who was pregnant at the time and only 26 years old, and these five children were dead.

It's tragic to think just how unlucky this family was—the only known deaths in the continental United States caused by the enemy during World War II. The wrong place, the wrong time, and the innocent curiosity that went horribly wrong. There are still balloons out there. Obviously, of the thousands, less than a thousand have been discovered. So you have to think that in the massive forests of the Pacific Northwest—Canada, Washington, Oregon—there are some balloons out there.

If you're hiking in the Northwest, be a little careful, and if you see an element like a wheel with teeth on it, that's a sharp end of a disaster awaiting you, as it can explode. They're still there; they're still waiting to be found.