White Paper: Balloon Bombs from Japan

Episode 435: In November 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army began launching paper balloons from the coast of Honshu — each one carrying incendiary and anti-personnel bombs, designed to ride the jet stream across the Pacific and set fire to the forests of North America. They called the program Fu-Go. Canada called them White Paper. Over the following five months, more than sixty balloons came down on Canadian soil, from the British Columbia coast to Manitoba, and a small team of Canadian Army bomb disposal officers spent eight months recovering live ordnance from some of the most remote terrain in the country under a blanket of total secrecy that reached all the way to the Prime Minister's office.  Sources: Fu-Go Balloon Bomb — WikipediaJapan's WWII Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America — Smithsonian MagazineBalloon Bombs: Japan's Answer to Doolittle — National Museum of the United States Air ForceOn Paper Wings — IMDBOn Paper Wings Retrospective — Oregon HumanitiesOn Paper Wings — Oregon ArtsWatchOn Paper Wings Screening — Japanese American National MuseumOn 75th Anniversary, Bly Remains Connected to Tragic WWII Event — Herald and NewsJapanese Balloon Bomb Explosion Location — PBS History DetectivesWWII-Era Balloon Bomb in B.C. Blown to Smithereens — Global NewsBC Studies No. 203 — Balloon Bombs, the Alaska Highway, and Influenza: Tsek'ehne Perspectives — BC StudiesEast, Captain Charles A. Japanese Balloons of World War Two. Prince George: College of New Caledonia Press, 1993.Coen, Ross. Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices