Censorship's Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan
During World War II, over 1,000 hydrogen filled balloons reached the US mainland, carrying assorted explosive charges. The balloons floated so far inland that some of them reached Suburban Detroit.
Due to US Military censorship of the press, only one story about this was published, and even today most Americans never knew it happened. As a matter of fact the History textbook I used in high school stated that Japanese forces and bombs never reached US soil.
One reason this is troubling is the fact that one of the bombs killed a group of children.
May 5, [1945] the Rev. Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife, Elsie, took a group of children from his church on an outing to Oregon's Gearhart Mountain. Mitchell let the kids out of the car before he went off to park. His wife got out, too, to supervise. Mitchell found a spot up the road and pulled over. As he was getting out, he saw his charges clustered around a large white object on the forest floor. One of the kids tugged at it.
The bomb exploded, killing all the children and Mrs. Mitchell. They were the only fatalities on the U.S. mainland due to enemy action during World War II
In other words, had these people known about the bombs, they would have known to avoid them. Not knowing what it was resulted in one foolish woman letting a group of children (and herself) get blown to bits.
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