Tim Wendel

By late 1943, the tide of war had turned against the Japanese. Only a few years before the empire of the rising sun had extended far into Asia and encompassed much of the Pacific. From the borderlands of India to the islands of Alaska, half of the globe went to sleep fearful about what the darkness could bring.

After the battles of Midway and Guadalcanal such concerns began to diminish in the United States. The yellow hordes were no longer on the horizon, the politicians proclaimed. But the fear of another surprise attack, the long shadow of Pearl Harbor, would remain a nightmare for a generation.

As the B-29 bombers began to pound Tokyo and most of the other major Japanese cities to rubble, the Japanese military became desperate to find a way to once again instill fear in its enemies. Out of such efforts was born the fire balloon.

Able to reach heights of nearly forty thousand feet above the Earth, carried eastward by the jet stream, these inventions may have been constructed out of paper, but they were strong enough to transport small bombs all the way across the Pacific Ocean to North America. That such a contraption could travel distances of six thousand miles or more remains impressive to this day.

The goal was to deliver, in some small measure, a hint of the fire and destruction that rained down upon Japan. That these successful calculations of material and weather were made at a time when the sky burned red from the nightly bombing runs remains as remarkable as the balloons themselves. Even though security was tight for every launch, soldiers often slipped samhara – slips of paper with their personal prayers to the Shinto gods – into the folds of the balloons before liftoff.

From a modern point of view, the Japanese fire balloons would appear to be as effective as Don Quixote tilting at windmills. At first, the U.S. command in Washington and the Pacific was confused and then increasingly concerned about such attacks. Not that the fire balloons, primitive yet elegant, would reverse the Allies’ methodical campaign across the Pacific toward Tokyo.

But General Douglas MacArthur and many in the White House soon realized that for a nation weary of war alarm about a new attack could lead to a lack of resolve when such toughness was needed to finish the job. The Allies’ goal was to win an unconditional surrender from Japan. The same terms that appeared imminent in Germany.

So, the order was given to keep the fire balloons secret. Only the top levels of the U.S. military and the White House would truly know what kind of foe this was. A news blackout was evoked. Elite fire crews were formed throughout the Western states to fight the blazes resulting from such strikes. In most cases, only their commanders knew what they combating.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, a fledgling spy network had taken root. It would never have the numbers or success of its counterpart in Europe. After all, there were more obstacles – time, language and culture -- in this new theater of espionage. Still, Japanese-American agents had been employed with success in the retaking of the Philippines. Perhaps they would work closer to Tokyo.