Everyone loves balloons. They blow up, and hilarious clowns transform them into rabbits and pretzels. But what happens when balloons go bad? That’s something that we don’t often think about, but maybe, just maybe we should.
I wrote an “On This Day” for today about killer balloons from Japan during World War II. I was a history major, yet I still had no idea this happened. Apparently, during World War II the Japanese attacked the United States by launching balloons over the Pacific Ocean and into North America. The intention of the Japanese was to create forest fires and divert the U.S. war effort away from the Pacific.
The balloons failed. Well, there was one incident, and that’s what my On This Day commemorated: A pregnant Reverend’s wife and five children died when they tried to drag an unexploded balloon bomb out of an Oregon forest.
But the U.S. did quite a good job in keeping the balloons under wraps. By covering up the occurrences, not only was most of America in the dark (and still is today), but the Japanese had no idea if their brilliant plan worked. And so, they eventually scrapped the plan.
This is also balloon month at Dulcinea for some reason. Tomorrow’s “On This Day” is about the Hindenburg crash. And before that we did a story about the Brazilian priest who disappeared over the ocean when he tried to fly with 1,000 balloons because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The point of this blog entry is, I guess, balloons can be fun when treated right. But the second you let your guard down, that clown is gonna try to bomb your country.
balloons killed my father, and raped my mother