Forgotten History: The Aerial Balloon Attack on Ventura County During World War II

It was 81 years ago this week that World War II physically arrived in Ventura County, delivered not by planes or ships, but by paper balloons. This obscure chapter of local history involves the Japanese Fu Go project, a desperate late war attempt to strike the United States mainland using the Pacific jet stream. Historian Richard Senate, a leading expert on the event, notes that most current residents are entirely unaware that Ventura County was once a target of an intercontinental aerial attack.

Secret Weapons in the Jet Stream

By late 1944, the tide of the war had turned against Japan, and its leaders were looking for a way to retaliate against American soil. Having discovered the existence of high altitude air currents, they tasked schoolchildren with constructing more than 9,000 balloons made of traditional washi paper and potato flour paste. These hydrogen filled balloons, each roughly 33 feet in diameter, carried a payload of incendiary and high explosive bombs. They were designed to travel 6,000 miles across the ocean to trigger massive forest fires in the Western United States.

Two of these balloons are known to have reached Ventura County. In early 1945, a balloon drifted over Saticoy in the middle of the night and released its bomb, which exploded in an open field. Residents reported being woken up by a mysterious blast, but because no property was damaged and no one was hurt, the cause remained a mystery at the time. The lightened balloon eventually continued its flight to Moorpark, where it crashed into a mountain. A second balloon was discovered by farmworkers in an Oxnard agricultural field in February 1945.

Media Blackout and the Oregon Tragedy

The balloons largely failed in their mission to start wildfires, primarily because they arrived during the damp winter months. To prevent Japan from learning if the weapons were reaching their targets, the U.S. government implemented a strict media blackout. This silence was only broken after a tragic incident in May 1945, when a woman and five children on a church picnic near Klamath Falls, Oregon, discovered a downed balloon. It exploded as they approached, resulting in the only known mainland casualties of World War II.

While Ventura County's balloon encounters ended without injury, the region was no stranger to direct enemy action. In February 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Ellwood, just west of Goleta, and fired shells at an oil processing facility. Though the damage was minor, it marked the first time the North American mainland was attacked during the conflict. Today, the remnants of these balloons are rare collector's items, serving as a silent reminder of a time when the global conflict reached the quiet fields of Saticoy and Oxnard.