"Balloons Carrying Bombs Drift Over Oregon

By November 1944, almost in a cruel and desperate afterthought to what seemed a lost cause, balloons launched from Japan and carrying explosive and incendiary bombs drifted east on the jet stream to the United States. Once again, the goal was to start forest fires and wreak devastation. On December 6 after a "mysterious explosion" in Wyoming, officials found balloon parts and bomb casing fragments from what had been a 33 pound high explosive bomb. During the next several months, Japan launched over 9,000 balloon bombs resulting in over 342 incidents registered throughout western United States and Canada. Oregon alone counted 45 balloon incidents. While they varied in size and design, many balloons measured about 100 feet in circumference and about 33 feet in diameter. The ingenious design helped them drift along the newly discovered fast moving jet stream at an average elevation of 30,000 feet.

[Could the devastating fires in California, Oregon and Washington be deliberate attempts to draw attention to things other than other types of attacks Now?]

The balloons quickly attracted the attention of military and civilian defense officials across the West. Jack Hayes, the acting administrator of the State Defense Council acknowledged the problem of apathy commonly on display in the later months of the war: "Here in the northwest we have never lost our fear that the enemy would attempt to utilize our forests and unfavorable periods of weather as a means of attacking us here at home. In spite of the developing feeling the war was largely over and that Civilian Defense could be relegated to an almost inactive status.