by Leon Thomas

Created on: December 30, 2007

JAPANESE ATTACK IN CALIFORNIA?

If I told you that as a child I saw World War II action inside the USA, most of you would say I'm crazy as a loon. I was about 3 or 4 years old when this event took place. We lived just south of St. Helena California in the Napa Valley. One morning my we could hear my father yelling for us kids to come out side. We could tell by his voice it was important and that we should hurry. So out we all ran as fast as possible to the front of the house. I'm not sure what order we arrived out front, but my brother Raymond and sister Glenda probably beat my mom and I to the yard. My brother Raymond was almost 9 years older than me and my sister Glenda was 8 years older. As we ran out the front door we could see my dad standing in the center of the yard looking up in the sky with a pair of binoculars. We all looked up to see what he was looking at.

There was a balloon floating down the valley near our home with something hanging below it. The balloon wasn't as big as those people ride in, but more like a weather balloon. All of a sudden we could hear the roar of airplanes coming. We watched in awe as two P-38 airplanes came swooping in on this balloon. The P-38 was a famous plane during world war two; it had two engines and two tail sections. It is probably one of the easiest airplanes to identify. Both planes opened fire with their machine guns on this balloon and almost instantly an explosion followed. We watched in total fascination after the balloon exploded as the fire and smoke dissipated from the sunny Napa Valley sky.

My mother was a bus driver for the government during the war and she would transport shipyard workers to and from work at Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo, CA... Her route was the entire Napa Valley from St. Helena to Calistoga. My mother would let me ride the bus sometimes and even let me steer the big bus as I sat on her lap. I can still remember that huge steering wheel that didn't stand upright like steering wheels today, but it was more flat and huge. Maybe those early experiences had something to do with me becoming a truck driver most of my life. When I rode with my mother the Marines at the gate would tease me and give me a hard time. The would board the bus and check everyone's ID, but since as a four year old I didn't have one, they would pretend to remove me from the bus. I remember screaming at them, "let me go you dirty Japs". I also remember a large number of balloons that surrounded Mare Island. These balloon s hung high in the air and were tethered with long cables. I learned that they were to prevent these Japanese balloons from getting into the shipyard area and causing damage.

From time to time I've shared this story about the balloon with a friend, but just last week after sharing with a friend who is a writer. My friend asked if I had ever told this to a reporter for newspaper or radio. No, I said and he advised me to do so telling me that the public would love to hear about such an occurrence. After giving it some thought, I decided to share it with my friends here at Helium. This is a true story that I witnessed personally. I'm 66 years young now and only found out a few years ago that one of these balloons killed a preacher and his family in Oregon as they discovered it in the woods as they were hiking. One of the children found it and must have done something to make it explode. These balloon were launched into the Jet Stream by the Japanese. Many of these balloons found their way into the west coast of the United States.

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