Japanese high altitude balloons

On this date May 5, 1945 tragedy struck an Oregon couple and some children:

In Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell, and five neighborhood children were killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods that had found during a Sunday school outing.

Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II.

The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and Ethel Patzke, of the five slain children.


In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon | History | Smithsonian Magazine