Balloon Bombs Over Michigan During World War II

The Detroit region is famous for its Arsenal of Democracy and the contribution local workers and factories made to the victory by America and her allies in World War II. Far less well known is how a small fire in a vacant field in Farmington marked one of the last acts of aggression Japan was able to muster in the final months of that horrific war.

On a Sunday afternoon in March, 1945, a couple living along Gill Road in Farmington noticed a small fire burning in a vacant lot down the road. Thinking it was just a bonfire set by a neighbor, they didn't think much of it - nor of the "muffled" noise "similar to a shot" that they had heard a little earlier.

Later that summer, the Army would confirm that the fire in Farmington had been set by a Japanese balloon bomb - part of a last ditch effort by Japan to attack the American homeland as the U.S. Navy and Marines were scoring hard-fought victories in the Pacific and were slowly advancing toward Japan itself.

"This was the counterstrike from the Doolittle Raid," said Col. Carroll V. Glines, a retired Air Force pilot who served in World War II and is the author of more than 35 books on Air Force history.

"The Japanese knew the psychological effect that the Doolittle Raid had caused and were looking for a way to have the same impact against the U.S.," Glines said.

In April 1942, less than five months after the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor, the U.S. launched a daring bombing raid against Tokyo and several other Japanese cities. Led by famed aviator Lt. Col. (and later, Gen.) Jimmy Doolittle, 16 B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier several hundred miles away from Japan. Fifteen of the bombers made it to Japan to drop their bombs and then continued on toward China for a planned landing. Flying at extreme range, all of the aircraft had to make crash landings, running out of fuel before reaching their destination. All of the B-25s on the Raid were lost and 11 of the 80 airmen on the mission were either killed or captured.

While the actual bombing caused little damage, the psychological impact of knowing that Japan itself was susceptible to enemy attack forced Japan to keep additional forces close to home for defensive purposes, ultimately having a significant impact on the war in the Pacific, Glines said, during a recent speaking engagement at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, where he was accompanied by Lt. Col. Richard Cole, who served as Doolittle's co-pilot on the Raid and is one of nine men still living who participated in the Raid.

As the war began to turn against Japan, the Imperial Army developed the balloon bomb plan, eventually launching approximately 9,000 small hot-air balloons that drifted east across the Pacific Ocean toward North America, each carrying a small bomb. Most never made it across the ocean. A few drifted into Canada or Mexico. Only one would prove deadly, landing in Oregon and killed a minister, his wife and their four children out for a Sunday afternoon picnic.

The bomb in Farmington is believed to have been the furthest east one of the bombs traveled - a distance of more than 6,000 miles from the launching point.

Around 4 p.m. on March 25, 1945, William Hedt, a Michigan State Police sergeant, and his wife noticed the fire in the field near their home. The couple thought little more of it until June 8, when Hedt's neighbor, John T. Cook, brought over an odd metal can Cook had found in his garden. Cook first noticed the can in late April, as he prepared the garden for the season. He assumed it was just a tin can and tossed it aside with his shovel. On June 7, he read an article in the paper about the Japanese balloon bombs, warning people to be on the lookout for odd things. The next day, he took the can over to Hedt, who filled up an official report that eventually went up the police channels and reached the federal authorities.

A week later, an FBI agent came out to interview both Hedt and Cook and the agent's report, along with the can, were sent to Army Sixth Services Headquarters in Chicago. The Army later decided the can was very likely a part of a Japanese balloon bomb.

Information about the balloon bombs was tightly controlled. Authorities in Farmington and the Detroit area were unaware that two school boys in Allegan County in west Michigan had watched a balloon bomb land in a farm field on Feb. 23. With help from a neighbor, the boys brought the balloon shroud home and eventually it was turned over to the Kent County sheriff. In a story reported on June 6 by the International News Service that appeared in several Michigan newspapers, an Army spokesman would say only that a Japanese balloon bomb had struck "somewhere in the state." It is likely this was the story Cook read and then contacted his neighbor, Hedt.

On Aug. 16, 1945, in a news conference that took place two days after Japan surrendered, State Police Capt. Donald S. Leonard, the state's director of Civil Defense, officially confirmed the existence of the Allegan County and Farmington bombs and said a Navy plane had attempted to shoot down a balloon bomb a few months previous over Sault Ste. Marie in the eastern Upper Peninsula before the bomb "disappeared into a cloud formation." He also suggested some northern Michigan wildfires that summer may have been started by Japanese balloon bombs, but had no proof that was the case.

Despite Leonard's announcements, with the war over and the nation anxious to make the transition back to a peacetime normalcy, the balloon bombs were quickly forgotten and the Detroit region's Arsenal of Democracy was quickly back to the business of putting the nation on wheels.