I saw a docu on tv last eve...

[hawkdon]

That was about "Balloon Bombs" that were sent to USA by the
Japanese during that war....I was completely surprised, as I'd never
heard of this before...some 9,000 were sent aloft, and as far as the
experts know some 800 land somewhere in USA......

 

[Alligatorob]

Yes, and 6 people were killed in Oregon by one of them. Near Klamath Falls, @Gary O' s turf.

I believe those were the only US causalities in the 48 states as a result of Japanese attack. Not a lot of other damage was done, a few fires started.

6 civilians killed in Oregon by Japanese bomb, May 5, 1945​

 

[Gary O']

Yes, and 6 people were killed in Oregon by one of them. Near Klamath Falls, @Gary O' s turf.

Yup

 

[Llynn]

In the late 40's and very early 50's local loggers would occasionally find fragments of well weathered silk containing Japanese symbols out in the woods of western WA. It was speculated that these fragments were remnants of failed balloons. One of my friend's father had a piece of this fabric on the wall of his shop. One of his veteran friends (who had been a pow) ripped it off the wall and set it on fire.

 

[SeniorBen]

Yep, they discovered the Jet Stream and used it to send the balloons to the U.S.

In the 1920s, a Japanese meteorologist, Wasaburo Oishi, detected the jet stream from a site near Mount Fuji. He tracked pilot balloons, also known as pibals (balloons used to determine upper level winds),[9] as they rose into the atmosphere. Oishi's work largely went unnoticed outside Japan because it was published in Esperanto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Discovery

 

[OneEyedDiva]

That was before I was born and I never was much of a history buff so I hadn't heard of it either. So sad.