Balloon bomb that landed in Rigby nearly 80 years ago was a failed attempt to terrorize America
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Editor’s note: This is the eleventh in a series highlighting the stories behind local museum artifacts.
RIGBY – Jefferson County Sheriff Oscar Orstrom and his deputy, Wayne Adams, arrived at the field east of Rigby as the balloon bomb hovered in the air.
It was February 22, 1945 and the device made of rice paper carried anti-personnel and incendiary bombs. It was one of 9,000 unmanned balloons the Japanese launched against the U.S. the previous November. It was months before the U.S. would launch an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, signaling a U.S. victory and an end to World War II.
Air defense facilities in the U.S. had recently been deactivated, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, and that’s when the balloon attacks began.
Years earlier, Lt. Col. James Doolittle of the United States Air Force led a B-25 air raid over Tokyo. America’s initial retaliation against the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor killed 50 people and caused only minor damage, but it did much to boost morale for U.S. forces.
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Prompted by the Doolittle raid, a 1945 article from the Rigby Star reports the Japanese balloons were armed with four 10-pound incendiaries and one 35-pound high explosive bomb. The attacks weren’t intended to do widespread damage, but were designed to start wildfires and distract America in the waning days of World War II, according to Cleave Reddick, curator at the Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum, which has information about the attack.
Although 9,000 balloon bombs had been launched, only about 1,000 made it to North America. Balloons landed in 16 states, as well as Canada and Mexico. Only 285 incidents were reported in the U.S.
“As more sightings occurred, the government, with the cooperation of the news media, adopted a policy of silence to reduce the chance of panic among U.S. residents and to deny the Japanese any information on the success of the launches,” the Air Force museum reports.
A week before it landed in Rigby, an official spoke with The Rigby Star about not publishing reports of any balloon sightings “to be sure that no one spotted the range for the Japs.”
The incident had come after a recent drop on the Bonneville Dam power line in Idaho Falls, which caused a brief outage.
Rigby residents spotted the balloon flying towards 4300 East and pulled it to the ground as it lost altitude. Sheriff Orstrom had arrived moments earlier.
“Much of the 17,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas originally contained in the 35-foot diameter bag had escaped, but there was enough left to retain its pear shape when pulled to the ground. Sheriff Orstrom and Deputy Adams took charge and later delivered the balloon and accessories to the proper agency,” the Rigby Star reported.
Fragments from previous balloons had been given to Army Intelligence officials, but this was the first model that was fully intact.
Japanese attempts to use these devices as a war weapon were a major flop, according to news reports at the time.
“Had the Japanese held the atomic bomb secret, it could have been a success as it did deliver its load to America, although in a haphazard manner. No industrial damage was ever done by any of those landing in our country,” the Rigby Star reported.
But there were several deaths that occurred.
On May 6, 1945, months after the balloon landed in Rigby, six people were killed in Oregon when a bomb they dragged from the woods exploded.
“The U.S. government quickly publicized the balloon bombs, warning people not to tamper with them. These were the only known fatalities occurring within the United States during World War II as a direct result of enemy action,” according to the Air Force Museum.
American hostility towards Japan
The failed Japanese balloon plot only increased hostilities between the warring nations. The Rigby Star article, written the day before the U.S. bombed Japan, referred to the East Asian country as a “bastard nation” that “must be reduced to zero and closely watched for many years.”
This hatred extended to Japanese Americans.
An executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 gave military leaders the right to remove Japanese people on the West Coast — even those who were U.S. citizens — and place them in internment camps throughout the country.
One of these camps was the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. More than 10,000 Japanese Americans were housed here between 1942 and 1945.
Chase Clark of Idaho Falls, Idaho’s governor at the time, supported the relocation of Japanese people to this camp.
He reportedly made a disparaging remark about the Japanese in May 1942 while speaking at a Lion’s Club meeting in Grangeville.
“Japs live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats. We don’t want them permanently located in our state,” he is reported to have said.
Clark reportedly apologized for this statement years later. His grandson, Chase Church, believes it was the reason he was not re-elected for a second term.
Though the Japanese incarceration camps were closed at the end of the war, FDR’s executive order was not officially rescinded until 1976. Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, calling the order a “grave injustice” to Japanese Americans. Around $1.6 billion in reparations were given to “formerly interned Japanese Americans or their heirs,” one article reports.
“We must recognize that the internment of Japanese Americans was … a mistake,” President Ronald Reagan said in a 1988 speech. “Throughout the war, Japanese Americans in the tens of thousands remained utterly loyal to the United States.”
Today, a Day of Remembrance is held every year to celebrate this legislation. The Japanese American Citizens League works to “secure and maintain the civil rights of Japanese Americans and all others who are victimized by injustice and bigotry.”
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