The monument dedicated to the victims of the balloon bomb.
In Lakeview, Oregon on this day in 1945, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five
neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese
balloon (similar to the one shown above) out of the woods.
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, the five slain children.
The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only
a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States,
which were conducted early in the war by the Japanese.
