70 yrs ago today: Japan bombed Oregon

Creative idea by a desperate nation. Not very effective in the end. IIRC, their hope was to set the forests of the Pacific Northwest all on fire and sap our resources while we tried to fight massive forest fires. Little did they know, that here in California, we just call that "summer".:rofl:
 
Not very effective, but it did cause the only WWII casualties on US soil.
 
Interesting point in the article is that the US War Department kept it a secret up until this incident, even though they knew about the balloons, because they didn't want the Japanese to know that they were successfully crossing the ocean.
 
Everskyward said:
Interesting point in the article is that the US War Department kept it a secret up until this incident, even though they knew about the balloons, because they didn't want the Japanese to know that they were successfully crossing the ocean.
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Probably didn't want to admit it to the US public, either.

When a Japanese sub shelled the California coast near Santa Barbara a couple years prior, that event helped trigger the internment camps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood
 
Interesting. I had never heard the story either. I have become a fan of podcasts and will subscribe to RadioLab.
 
Matthew said:
Not very effective, but it did cause the only WWII casualties on US soil.
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Uhhh... Pearl Harbor?

Yeah, Hawaii wasn't a state yet, but it was a US territory and thus "US soil".

So, they were the only WWII deaths in the 48 states.
 
Dav8or said:
Creative idea by a desperate nation. Not very effective in the end. IIRC, their hope was to set the forests of the Pacific Northwest all on fire and sap our resources while we tried to fight massive forest fires. Little did they know, that here in California, we just call that "summer".:rofl:
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:lol:

I hate to laugh b/c I know California's drought has been awful.
 
Alaska was a territory as well during WW2. There were US deaths there as well.
 
According to whippie goldberg, Japan never bombed America...
 
Reminds me of the quote by the late Jerome Brown, defensive tackle of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1987 to 1991.

According to Wikipedia, "five days before the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, at a promotional Fiesta Bowl dinner with the Penn State team, Brown led a walkout by the [University of] Miami players. Leading the walkout, he asked: 'Did the Japanese go sit down and have dinner with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them?'"

Penn State beat Miami, 14-10.
 
I thought it was the Germans that bombed Pearl Harbor.

Now, where's my toga?
 
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