Bullets in the wind and the omen of silence: the paper war in the sky in 1944.

Bullets in the wind and the omen of silence: the paper war in the sky in 1944.

In 1944, Japan, in the midst of a war situation that had it cornered, unleashed one last gambit on the prevailing westerly winds. It was the "balloon bomb. Giant paper balloons, elaborately made of Japanese paper and konjac glue, were suspended with bombs and sent across the Pacific to the U.S. mainland. About 10,000 or more were released, some actually reaching Canada and Oregon, causing forest fires and deaths. The damage, however, was quietly contained by the U.S. government, which restricted the media coverage.

Meanwhile, U.S. geologists identified the Japanese launch site as the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture, based on the composition of the soil on the recovered balloons, and looked for a way to strike back. This "soil investigation" was truly an intersection of science and war. The Japanese military was also considering the idea of loading a pathogen onto a balloon bomb. This was an inhumane plan to load anthrax and plague bacilli into the bombs and drop them on enemy territory. However, it was abandoned by some military doctors for reasons of retaliation and morality.

This paper-and-glue weapon was imbued with Japanese science and spirit, as well as the pride and conflict of being a defeated nation. The invisible battlefield in the sky ended in silence, and the story continues to be told secretly in a corner of history.