Fu-go by Ross Coen

Author:Ross Coen [Coen, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027100 History / Military / World War Ii
ISBN: 9780803256682
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2014-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

7

Canada

On January 20, 1945, shortly after the third confirmed balloon incident in Canada, Brigadier General Maurice Pope sent a priority memorandum to William Lyon Mackenzie King, the nation’s prime minister. “With regard to . . . the discovery of Japanese balloon-bombs over western Canada,” the staff officer wrote, “the object in releasing these balloons [has] more to do with a study of meteorological conditions than anything else.”1 Pope had recently spoken to General Andrew McNaughton, Canada’s national defense minister, who believed the bombs’ main purpose was not destructive but simply to generate press reports that would help the Japanese understand Pacific weather patterns, perhaps for some future aerial campaign. McNaughton and Pope accordingly recommended that no publicity be given to incidents. The men did acknowledge the possibility of bacteriological warfare and assured the prime minister that close coordination with U.S. authorities would continue.

There is no evidence the Japanese balloon offensive occupied any significant amount of Prime Minister King’s attention thereafter—just as American presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman had no direct involvement with the U.S. response. The nations’ respective defense agencies collaborated from the very beginning of the balloon attack, though not without a few false starts. The first incongruity that had to be resolved was a minor one. The Canadian Armed Forces had initially assigned the code name “Crabapple” to the Japanese balloons but quickly replaced it with “Paper,” the U.S. War Department’s preferred appellation.2

Next came Minton. In mid-January, following the landing of the Saskatchewan balloon and recovery of its battery box, sandbags, and other detritus, U.S. officials from the Western Defense Command traveled to Vancouver on the understanding the evidence had been shipped there and was available for inspection. Everything from Minton had already been sent to laboratories in Ontario, however. “It seems necessary to coordinate our efforts on the subject with the United States authorities,” wrote a frustrated Canadian army officer to his superiors at the Department of National Defence on January 24. “Efforts so far appear to be circumscribed by the lack of definite directives to the three services [army, navy, air force] and to the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police].”3

That very day, representatives from the three service branches and officers of the RCMP gathered at the National Defence Building in Ottawa for a meeting of the newly formed Joint Service Committee on Japanese Balloons (JSCJB).4 Chaired by Colonel J. H. Jenkins, the committee established an interservice command structure that closely resembled that in the United States in that the army assumed primary responsibility for recovering balloons, investigating all incidents, and dispatching bomb disposal personnel to every landing site. Lieutenant Colonel E. L. Borradaile was accordingly directed to establish a bomb disposal (BD) task force in the western provinces. Where BD officers typically destroyed ordnance on site, the unique circumstances of the Japanese balloons made the collection of intelligence a high priority. Borradaile’s team was therefore ordered not to blow everything up but instead to “secure for research purposes all objects connected with balloons.”5

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