World War 2's Forgotten Japanese Balloon Attacks and the Mitchell Monument

The mainland United States was largely untouched during World War 2, but not completely. There were a few isolated incidents, mostly along the Pacific Coast, but there was only one place in the contiguous United States where any Americans were killed by enemy action. Surprisingly, in a remote forest area near Bly, Oregon, six American's lost their lives, the victims of Japan's little remembered balloon attack program.

Japan had been looking for a way to hit the U.S. mainland, but due to the distance and limited resources, they had very few options. In late 1944 they began a program that would send hydrogen filled paper balloons into the jet stream, with the intent that some would reach the United States and possibly start forest fires, diverting manpower from the war in the Pacific.

Over 9,000 balloons were launched, but very few made it to the United States. So as not to give any intelligence to Japan on the success of the program, the United States kept the existence of the balloons secret from the American public.

On May 5, 1945, a few months before World War 2 came to an end, Reverend Archie Mitchell took his wife and five Sunday school children for a picnic on Gearhart Mountain. The children would stumble across one of the Japanese balloons and set it off, killing Mitchell's wife and all five children.

In this video we travel to the Fremont-Winema National Forest and to the site of the balloon explosion, where a small monument now sits. Along the way we examine the history of the program, see trees that still have scars from the blast, and talk about how the Mitchell party became the only American's killed in World War 2 within the continental United States.

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