70 years ago, a balloon bomb landed in Everett

EVERETT — Today marks the 70th anniversary of the little-known World War II Japanese attack on Everett.

It came in the form of a large hydrogen balloon rigged with explosives that landed about a quarter mile west of the Glenwood Avenue Fire Station.

Some military men from nearby Paine Field quickly and quietly disposed of the mysterious object that had floated over the Pacific Ocean. The balloon itself, 33 feet in diameter, was composed of paper made from mulberry root.

There was no mention in any newspapers. It was wartime and an era when information was suppressed to keep the enemy in the dark.

“They very effectively muffled the whole thing,” said David Dilgard, a historian with Everett Public Libraries.

Beginning in November 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army launched more than 9,000 balloon bombs toward North America.

“We know of a few hundred that were identified as having reached the U.S. or western Canada,” said Tom Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The balloon bombs, often called Fugo, landed as far away as Alaska, Michigan and Mexico. Much of the paper used for the balloons was put together by Japanese schoolchildren.

“There was enough explosives on those things that it could have caused some serious mayhem,” Dilgard said.

They proved relatively ineffective as weapons, but had the potential to do great damage, Crouch said. There was some indication that the Japanese were considering using them for biological warfare.

“You have to put it in perspective,” Crouch said. “When the Japanese were doing this, we were burning Japanese cities down to the ground. It was sort of the ultimate Hail Mary pass.”

Robert Mikesh, a retired colleague of Crouch at the Smithsonian, wrote extensively about the balloon bombs.

“Had these weapons been further exploited by using germ or gas bombs, the results could have been disastrous to the American people,” he wrote in his book “Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America.”

Gary Griffith, 83, remembers when the bomb landed in Everett. He knew the area well. He had an afternoon paper route along Glenwood Avenue on March 13, 1945. By the time he reached the patch of brush and second-growth woods, it had been cleaned up and deserted.

Sensing its historical significance, he scooped up some of the sand that had been used for ballast and picked up a small scrap of the balloon paper and put them in a jar for safekeeping. He’s guessing he lost his war-time relic when his parents moved into a new home.

Because it was war time, and there were large-scale fears that information about the bombs could get back to the Japanese military and aid in its strategies, Griffith kept his mouth shut.

“One of the phrases I remember at the time was, ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ ” he said. “Nobody talked about it.”

That’s the way it was in communities in other states where the bombs landed.

It remained that way until May 1945 when a minister’s wife named Elsie Mitchell and five Sunday schoolchildren were killed near Bly, Oregon, as they unwittingly dragged a balloon from the woods, causing the bomb to detonate. After that, the government began issuing public warnings to steer clear of such suspicious objects.

News of the Japanese balloon bombs still crops up from time to time.

In January, the Canadian Press reported that a navy bomb disposal team was called to a remote spot in the Monashee Mountains near Lumby, British Columbia, after a balloon bomb was found by forestry workers. The bomb squad blew it up because it was deemed too dangerous to move.

At least a part of the balloon that landed in Everett is believed to exist today. In 2008, a Texas woman whose grandfather was a U.S. Air Force pilot during World War II asked the PBS show “History Detectives” to authenticate a scrap of paper believed to be part of a balloon bomb. He’d been given the souvenir at Paine Field.

Experts concluded it was from a Japanese balloon bomb, probably from the one disposed of in Everett 70 years ago today.

Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.