The only casualties that occurred in the continental U.S. during World War II occurred on May 5, 1945 as a result of Japan’s Top Secret V1 project. The objective was to release thousands of forty foot rice paper balloons into the jet stream over Japan which would blow them across the Pacific to the northwestern United States. The belief was that the shower of bombs would create a panic among American citizens.
On this date, bomb did drop into a group of picnickers on Weyerhauser company land on Gearhart Mountain near Bly, Oregon. The group included a Pastor named Rev. Archie Mitchell, his pregnant wife, their five children and some other Sunday School kids. Authorities knew of the balloon attacks, and while they had been keeping them secret to avoid panic, had recently decided to quietly get the word out to local officials, community leaders, etc. Reverend Archie Mitchell was one of these who had been told, but he didn’t let the story out (leaders were to be quiet about it).
He was parking the car when his wife and the kids found something and called to him; he was about to warn them not to touch anything when the bomb went off, killing his wife and five children. In a sad post-script to the story, Rev. Mitchell later remarried (to an older sister of one of the children killed), and ended up becoming a missionary to this remote Asian country called Vietnam… and he ended up disappearing in the turmoil of the war there.. In spite of these fatalities, the program was a failure, as only a handful of bombs actually reached their objective.
