With hundreds never recovered, still a rare chance of risky encounter
By Christian Boris, KTVZ.COM
In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese military launched bomb-carrying balloons to http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4109 the American homeland. Many balloons landed in Oregon, including one that killed six people in Klamath County.
On May 5, 1945, a group of Sunday school students encountered a balloon bomb snagged in a tree near Bly in Klamath County. Thirteen-year-old Joan Patzke attempted to pull the balloon from the tree when the attached bomb exploded, killing five children and a woman, Elsie Mitchell.
The Mitchell Monument near Bly remembers the victims at the site of the explosion. The plaque on the monument states that the victims were the only American deaths in the continetal U.S. attributed to enemy action during World War II.The balloon bombs were launched with the hopes of igniting large forest fires across Western North America and creating general panic among the population.
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