The extensively researched history of a little-known aspect of World War II: the Japanese balloon bombs that landed in the USA during the last year of the fighting.

During World War II, the US government and military treated the balloon bombs that Japan began launching across the Pacific Ocean as a closely guarded secret, despite the fact that at least 350 of them reached the continental United States and they killed six people. When the balloons first appeared no one knew what they were or where they came from. Most of them were found in the Pacific states, but a few reached the Midwest. They were free-floating balloons that were designed to reach what we now know as the jet stream which enabled them to cross the Pacific. Clearly the balloons carried explosives that could ignite fires in the isolated forests of the west and cause people to panic. They were kept secret to avoid panicking residents and to prohibit the Japanese from knowing that the bombs had landed. Fear that the balloons might carry biological weapons was great, but none was ever found to be present. The largest number of the balloon bombs appeared in the early months of 1940 when the winds carrying them were strongest, but the winds also carried rain and snow which insured that any fires they started were quickly extinguished. Although the numbers of arriving balloon bombs was declining by May, a group on a church picnic found and investigated one. It exploded killing five teenagers and a pregnant woman. Some attempt was made to warn people to avoid anything they found, and the war soon ended.
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