War Time Censorship

This is an excerpt from an interesting story about war-time censorship. It talks about Japanese ballons carrying bombs to North America.

"From late 1944 through the spring of 1945, the Japanese launched more than 9,000 balloons from their nation's eastern shores. Filled not with mild-mannered hot air but extremely flammable hydrogen and armed with incendiary and antipersonnel bombs, the balloons rode the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean for several days before landing throughout North America."

Apparently the Japanese were monitering North American newspapers to see if thier evil plot was working. The news was censored to trick them into thinking it was a waste of resources even though the balloons were somewhat successful.

The author goes on to say that the worst part of this censorship wasn't that people in 1945 didn't know about the balloons, it that people now, 60 years later still don't know about them. The balloons were just censored form the 1945 awareness, they were erased from history.

Here is a military museum webpage dedicated to the Japanese balloons. A quick google search shows that there are quite a few local stories about these balloon bombs.

It is amazing how something as odd as sending thousands of Balloons across the Pacific Ocean armed with incendiary bombs could be mainly hidden from the public's knowledge for 60 years.

-Gary Milner