Use of fire in warfare is history. Think Greek Fire. Think the fire bombing of Dresden. Some of the carper fire bombings of WWII has close to the same impact as the nukes. Right now there are right wing paranoids that claim antifasc or blm is setting forest fires in the West. What is happening with the fires is a perfect storm of events. Over the course of history I am surprised that deliberately setting forests on fire has not been more common. The Agent Orange used to deforest Vietnam is similar in tactic. All I am saying is that the technology is there, not even necessary to have DEW, but humanity has set themselves up for such catastrophes. Near me there are literally 100,000 of acres of what I would term ancient forests that will never return with similar features unless there is a major reset of human population. Part of the problem is the reburning that reduces productivity and biodiversity so much. Forests wee once my career and my pessimism about the future of our forests and what it means is brutal. alas. My mind is sort of wandering these days.
During WWII the Japanese sent balloons aloft in an attempt to set the western forests on fire. My Mom was on balloon patrol at what was then Onion Mountain Lookout looking down at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Klamath River.
Six people were killed by a Japanese incendiary bomb carried by balloon north of Klamath Falls, OR.
May 5, 1945: Japanese Balloon Bomb Kills 6 in Oregon1945:: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. They are the only World War II U.S. combat casualties in the 48 states.
Months before an atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima, the United States and Japan were locked in the final stages of World War II. The United States had turned the tables and invaded Japan's outlying islands three years after Japan's invasion of the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.
That probably seemed a world away to a Sunday school teacher, her minister husband and five 13- and 14-year-old students near Klamath Falls. Rev. Archie Mitchell was driving the group along a mountainous road on the way to a Saturday afternoon picnic, according to the Mail Tribune, a southern Oregon newspaper.
Teacher Elyse Mitchell, who was pregnant, became sick. Her husband pulled the sedan over. He began speaking to a construction crew about fishing conditions, and his wife and the students momentarily walked away.
They were about a hundred yards from the car when she shouted back: "Look what I found, dear," the Mail Tribune reported.
One of the road-crew workers, Richard Barnhouse, said "There was a terrible explosion. Twigs flew through the air, pine needles began to fall, dead branches and dust, and dead logs went up."
The minister and the road crew ran to the scene. Jay Gifford, Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Dick Patzke and their teacher were all dead, strewn around a one-foot hole. The teacher's dress was ablaze. Dick Patzke's sister Joan was severely injured and died minutes later, the Mail Tribune wrote.
The six were victims of Japan's so-calledFu-Go or fire-balloon campaign. Carried aloft by 19,000 cubic feet of hydrogen and borne eastward by the jet stream, the balloons were designed to travel across the Pacific to North America, where they would drop incendiary devices or anti-personnel explosives.
Made of rubberized silk or paper, each balloon was about 33 feet in diameter. Barometer-operated valves released hydrogen if the balloon gained too much altitude or dropped sandbags if it flew too low.
In all, the Japanese released an estimated 9,000 fire balloons. At least 342 reached the United States. Some drifted as far as Nebraska. Some were shot down.
Some caused minor damage when they landed, but no injuries. One hit a power line and temporarily blacked out the nuclear-weapons plant at Hanford, Washington.
But the only known casualties from the 9,000 ballons – and the only combat deaths from any cause on the U.S. mainland – were the five kids and their Sunday school teacher going to a picnic.
https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0505japan ... ls-oregon/Nobuo FujitaNobuo Fujita (藤田信雄) (1911 – 30 September 1997) was a Japanese naval aviator and warrant flying officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy who flew a floatplane from the long-range submarine aircraft carrier I-25 and conducted the Lookout Air Raids in southern Oregon on September 9, 1942, making him the only Axis pilot during World War II to aerial bomb the contiguous United States.[1][2][3] Using incendiary bombs, his mission was to start massive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest near the city of Brookings, Oregon with the objective of drawing the U.S. military's resources away from the Pacific Theater. The strategy was also later used in the Japanese fire balloon campaign.
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Later life
Fujita continued as an Imperial Japanese Navy pilot, mainly in reconnaissance duties, until 1944, when he was transferred to the training of kamikaze pilots. After the war he opened a hardware store in Ibaraki Prefecture, and later worked at a company making wire.[4]
Fujita was invited to Brookings in 1962, after the Japanese government was assured he would not be tried as a war criminal. He gave the City of Brookings his family's 400-year-old katana in friendship. Ashamed of his actions during the war, Fujita had intended to use the sword to commit seppuku if he were given a hostile reception.[4] However, the town treated him with respect and affection, although his visit still raised some controversy.[7]
Impressed by his welcome in the United States, during his visit, he promised to invite Brookings students to Japan. Despite the bankruptcy of his company, Fujita made good on his promise by co-sponsoring the visit of three female students from Brookings-Harbor High School to Japan in 1985.[8][9] During the visit, Fujita received a dedicatory letter from an aide of President Ronald Reagan "with admiration for your kindness and generosity."
Fujita returned to Brookings in 1990, 1992, and 1995. In 1992, he planted a tree at the bomb site as a gesture of peace.[10] In 1995, he moved the samurai sword from the Brookings City Hall into the new library's display case. Fujita helped to gather money to build the library.
He was made an honorary citizen of Brookings several days before his death at a hospital in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, on September 30, 1997, at the age of 85.[11] In October 1998, his daughter, Yoriko Asakura, buried some of Fujita's ashes at the bomb site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita