![]() Balloons made it to Canada and Mexico as well. Officially, 300 were found from Alaska, the West Coast and as far east as Michigan, Texas and Iowa. The use of more durable paper over a rubberized silk showed the amount of effort that the Japanese military put into the project.įrom November of 1944 to the spring of 1945, the Japanese launched approximately 9,000 balloon bombs. Each balloon had a device with an altimeter that could allow the balloon to rise and fall to stay in the strong wind pattern at about 30,000 feet. The balloon bombs or fire balloons were more sophisticated than just an incendiary device on a rope. Most had no idea that the paper would be assembled into balloons, filled with hydrogen, and then armed with bombs. Teenage girls in high school were conscripted to make Japanese paper ( washi) in factories. The documentary begins with the Japanese military’s balloon bomb campaign. Her love of history led her to pursue the subject of the Japanese balloon bombs, their origins, and the one American town that felt its effects: Bly, Oregon. ![]() Sol has worked in the film industry for more than decade, often doing freelance research and production work. "On Paper Wings", a documentary by filmmaker Ilana Sol of Portland, Oregon, pulls together these seemingly disparate pieces, leading to a sense of reconciliation 40 years after World War II. A documentary that recounts a World War II Japanese military campaign that forced young Japanese women to help make balloons that were then armed with bombs and sent into the jet stream toward North America, resulting in the death of a woman and five girls in Oregon, and a Japanese American scholar who brought together some of the unwitting builders and the residents of the Oregon town, will be screened at the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, June 27, at 2 p.m.
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