May 3, 2022 • 27 mins
War is a brutal business, and it often leaves scars that last for generations. Two decades after he bombed Brookings, Oregon during World War II, former Imperial Japanese Navy pilot Nobuo Fujita returned to Brookings to give an official apology -- and the town essentially adopted him. Fujita would go on to visit Brookings multiple times, sponsoring student trips to Japan, and gifting the city his samurai sword, which had been in his family for more than 400 years.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
super producer. Give it up for him. His name is
Max Williams. They called me, they called me Ben. Uh No.
I think everybody at some point in their life has
needed to make a heartfelt apology. It can be difficult,
(00:49):
but it's it's an important thing to do and usually
you'll be the better for it. Well, let me take
this as an opportunity to make a heartfelt apology to you. Ben.
It was I that ate your leftover verse in the
uh the office fridge. Now, to be fair, they've been
in there for months. I probably got definitely ill as
a result of eating them. So that was my own
(01:10):
come uppance. And you probably forgotten about them in the
first place. And yet somehow I feel the need to
make a big to do about apologizing. Your name was
on it, Ben, and I disregarded that, And uh, is
that a true story? No, it's not a true story,
but it's okay story. You're not a leftover lever, Ben.
You know your know thyself. I feel like you know
(01:32):
you can apologize to me. Yeah, for drinking all your
your nice whiskey. No, no, for you know just call
me your nemesis on every podcast despite not doing anything
to you. Well, I mean that's all that's debatable to you.
How does one do something to someone you know? And
I see how it is. Yeah, No, I do apologize.
I drink. I drink a lot of your fancy whiskey
one time, and then I do apologize for that while
(01:54):
I was watching curling. Well, now that we're all uh,
now that we're all good, I will of one example. Uh,
this is old school how stuff works lore. I hope
I don't get in too much trouble for this. But
I did have a fridge thief fridge thief interaction many
years ago at our old office and Buckhead. I had
saved half of the Philly cheese steak sandwich on a Friday,
(02:18):
and I came in to the office on the weekend
because I was always I still always I'm going in
on the weekend, and uh, I found that my Philly
cheese steak was missing, and I was on a mission
to figure out who did it. So I started investigating.
I hit the streets or the hallways and the cubicles,
and I eventually learned that my cheese steak had been
(02:39):
taken none other by none other than my dear friend,
a good friend of the show, Josh Clark in his advance.
In his defense, he did come clean when I asked him,
and he said, why do you care? And I said,
because it's it's like beyond a party, foul man, you
you ate my cheese steak. And he did feel kind
of bad, but I do think it was. It was hilarious.
(03:02):
So every time I look at Josh, I still think
that guy owes me half a cheese steak. Yeah, it was.
It was it good. I mean, cheese steaks don't really
keep super well, to be fair, That's why I was
in the day after he moved quick. It was. It
was clearly half an eaten cheese steak wrapped in foil.
(03:24):
It's like, clearly not something left over from a party.
That's just up for grabs. But anyway, forgiveness, apologies. That's
what this story is about. And this I thought I
had had a wholesome ending. So this is this is
an interesting, fascinating tale from history. It does have some
ridiculous moments, but we can't wait to dive in. Let's
(03:47):
start with a tragedy. If you live in the US,
you are well aware of the events of Pearl Harbor
on December seven, nineteen forty one. And if you don't
live in the US. Want a primery, you should watch
the Michael Bay documentary Pearl Harbor um starring uh what's
his name? Yeah, that's right. It's apparently quite bad, but yeah,
(04:13):
it's it was a big deal. It's it was a
big deal. It was one of the only times we've
actually been directly attacked, you know, on American soil. Nine
eleven is often compared to Pearl Harbor. Yeah, yeah, but
I love you point this out. It was one of
the only times, but it was not the only time
the US was under air attack by Japanese forces. If
(04:34):
you go to September nine, there was a Japanese float
plane piloted by an officer named Nobu Fujita, which took
off from a submarine that was off Cape Blanco on
the southwestern Oregon coast. And this attack occurs in the
context of a couple of other attacks earlier that year.
(04:59):
In February twenty three, nineteen forty two, there was an
attack on the Elwood oil field outside of Santa Barbara,
and this attack sparked a panicked in the US populace.
They were not used to dealing with war on the
home front because you know, the US is geographically quite
fortunate in terms of uh its security. There are two
(05:21):
massive oceans on either side, too friendly countries to the
south and the north. It's hard to get here if
you are an army that is attempting to attack. So
people are still very concerned, Like I, I think you're
nine eleven. Comparison is pretty aptinal because you remember, in
(05:41):
the aftermath the attack on September eleven, two thousand and one,
people all over the country were worried that their town,
no matter how big or small, might be the next target.
And that's kind of how people were feeling during World
War Two. They thought Japanese forces would be able to
get past the ocean, would be able to touch them
(06:03):
on home soil. This was not a crazy fear, you know,
it didn't come out of the blue. There were several attacks,
as we have mentioned, and at this time the Imperial
Japanese Navy was super formidable. It was actually the most
powerful navy on the planet. During the Pearl Harbor attacks.
(06:24):
It had the biggest, most heavily armed battleships ever built,
the Yamato and the Musashi, and their naval aviation was
super awesome. Japanese forces made the largest submarines of World
War Two. They could carry their own aircraft, which might
sound pretty crazy today. And this I to five submarine
(06:45):
we're talking about how his surprise that submarines today do
not possess. They had planes that can fly from the
sub and then fly back to the sub. They were
retrievable usable they did this by folding up. The technology
is amazing. But that's where that's where our story takes place.
(07:08):
The we can talk about the stats sum if you want. Uh,
it was pretty big. Seventeen torpedoes had a naval gun
hundred forty millimeters individuals aboard, and it had one Yokosuka
E one four y sea plane. The Allied forces called
this the Glen and this was responsible for the only
(07:32):
attack on a mainland American military site during World War Two.
So the other one that wasn't Pearl Harbor. Yeah, And
on June twenty one two along the Oregon coastline. This
was the only mainland attack of an American military site
(07:54):
during World War Two. Uh, and it was along the
Oregon coastline, and um, there wasn't a American fishing vessel.
Uh that the Japanese submarine I very sneakily used to
evade capture, to evade detection, they kind of what would
you say, Ben, kind of tailed them a little bit,
I guess, or you know, it's sort of the equivalent
(08:14):
of like drafting someone in Mario Kart, or if you
hang out behind them, it's sort of like guards you
from others and even pick up a little extra steam.
That wouldn't have been the case here, but certainly would
have been a way to keep under the radar as
it were, because I mean they would have seen the
fishing vessel and maybe not paid attention to what was
close around. But its surfaced around Fort Stevens, which was
(08:36):
a kind of long in the tooth army base that
actually dated back to the Civil War, so it was
in really poor uh state, needed some TLC. But just
before midnight the ive used, Um it's above deck weapon
like a gatling gun kind of thing, or I don't know, Ben,
when you say it's a hundred and forty millimeters, So
(08:58):
is that like shells. There's that like we would you
call that like an ordinance, like a like a larger
scale mortar situation, or it's somewhere in between just regular
machine gun shells and larger ordinance, right, yeah, I would
call it. I would say, think of it like a
tank gun. So not a massive mortar around, but somewhere
(09:21):
in between, like an anti aircraft gun or something like that,
or a tank gun like you said. And they shot
seventeen of those forty millimeter bad boys at that fort,
and the commander of Fort Stevens actually ordered his men
not to return fire because he didn't want to give
away their positions, and he thought that the flashes from
the gun muzzles of the installations there on the fort
(09:45):
would have revealed that. And this, you know, apparently worked.
At first, I was kind of like, well, well, why
why did this matter? Because but again, because of the size,
the medium size of the rounds that are being fired
by the Japanese, they needed to be able to focus
um into areas where they were actually going to kill personnel,
because this wouldn't have been enough to like take down
(10:06):
the whole fort, for example. So by kind of hiding
their positions, they essentially rendered the attack a little bit
null and void. So instead a nearby baseball field actually
took a lot of the damage. Yeah yeah, which been
the bombardment wasn't very successful. The Fort Stevens plan worked.
But this just goes to show you how how good
(10:28):
the I was at getting close enough to do some damage.
And forgive me, fellow ridiculous historians. Every time I'm saying night,
I know it's the submarine, but it keeps making me
think of interstates. So the submarine, which is not an interstate,
makes history again when it does the first ever bombing
(10:50):
of the mainland continental United States by an enemy aircraft.
This is collectively known as the Lookout air raids. Now,
this is where we share a guy. Warrant officer Nabu Fujita.
His commander, Meijitagami, tells the crew to deploy that aircraft
were talking about, the Glenn. Armed with two pretty big
(11:11):
and century bombs sixty eight pounds each. Fujita is flying
under the cover of darkness, crosses onto dry land. The
idea is that if they dropped these incendiary bombs in
the right place, they can maybe start a forest fire
and have people in a panic. I wanna shout out
(11:32):
a couple of sources here. Of course history dot com
several articles from there, and of course Civilian Military Intelligence Group.
This comes from a blog post, but it's worth checking
out because it has pictures where you can see the
actual submarine we're describing, as well as the plane that
Fujita was flying. Americans didn't realize they were under attack
(11:54):
for a while. Uh. Some people have heard the ship,
heard the plane while they were on the ground. It
wasn't until six in the morning the next morning that
a U. S. Forest Service guy named Howard Gardner was
at the Mount Emily fire lookout and spotted the plane.
He said the engine sounded like a Model T backfiring
(12:17):
and he called it in and no one. No one
thought it was a threat. They were like, look, this
is just some guy in a plane. He's over the
wilderness in the middle of nowhere. Cool your jets, gardener,
pump your brakes. Watched the forest and another really good
resource to check out, by the way, is a site
called now I Know dot com. Uh, and there is
an article from about the lookout area which was actually
(12:40):
about to get into so later that day the forest
fires were discovered, and this UH Forest Service ranger guy,
I guess he went to check it out, and they
initially thought that lightning had caused them. They later found
a crater and they can only have been caused by
bomb fragments or bombing from airings. And eventually they found
(13:01):
the nose cone of the bomb and of course had
tell tale markings on it that indicated that they were
of Japanese origin. UH. Three weeks later, on September twenty nine,
early in the morning, Fujita led a second round of attacks.
He dropped two more bombs into the forest near Port Orford,
which around fifty miles up the coast from Brookings, Oregon.
(13:24):
And again the planes were sighted. Yeah, yeah, they found them,
and the U. S. Forest Service employees also described things
that sound like bombs, flashes, smoke. They searched the area,
they don't find anything, and they say, okay, you know
what probably happened. There's probably a small wildfire that burned
(13:45):
out because the forest is so damp. So again they
go back to that other explanation, lightning strikes. They say
they don't find any fragments, bombs. They don't release any
information about this until the next year. Uh, and let's
look at Fujita. This is where I think the story
gets really really interesting. So Fugita himself, Yeah, he very wholesome. Yes,
(14:10):
he he survives until the end of World War Two
and all the you know, horrors that happened in Japan
at that time. He eventually opens a hardware store near
Tokyo and like the kind of Tokyo suburbs. Unfortunately, the
hardware store goes bankrupt later and he takes a job
(14:30):
where he works at a wire company for a pretty
long time, and he doesn't really talk about his time
in the military. It doesn't come up. And if you've
ever had a veteran in your family from any war,
you know that often people have survived war, it's not
their first topic of conversation, and understandably so. So it
(14:51):
came to pass that Fujita's entire family had no idea
that he attacked to the US mainland until in ninety
sixty two he gets invited to Brookings, the place he
tried to bomb, and Uh, the Japanese government takes a
minute and they say, okay, we gotta figure out if
they're gonna try you as a war criminal. And they
(15:13):
say all right, we get the vibe that they're not
going to try as a war criminal, and so he says, okay,
I'm gonna go, and he takes along with him his
family's samurai sword. It's been in his family for four
hundred years. His plan is, look, I'm gonna present this
to the town as an apology from my attack, and
(15:34):
if they don't accept my apology, I'm going to commit sepuku,
a ritual suicide. That is intense, man. I mean, it's
it's not uncommon. I mean, you know, in the if
a Japanese, a very proud Japanese person is shamed in
some way or brings Sina's being a shame on their family,
this thing is absolutely on the table. His daughter, your
(15:58):
Eko A Sukar told The New York Times in an
interview quote, he thought perhaps people would still be angry
and would throw eggs at him if that happened. As
a Japanese, he wanted to take responsibility for what he
had done. That's a pretty heavy way of taking responsibility.
So I just just understand, I mean, he's apologizing, or
(16:19):
he's he's regretful because he made a mistake, or because
he did not agree with the mission of the war anymore.
I I think the idea is that he's a he's
officially no. Apologies are a big, big thing in that culture,
so I think he is. His motivation, if we could guess,
(16:39):
is to apologize for possibly putting civilians in danger, possibly
destroying you know, wilderness, and it's his way of making
peace or atoning. We should talk about sepuko if no one,
if if you're not aware of it, ridiculous historians. It's
sometimes called Harry Carey in the in the West, and
it is super grizzly. It starts by you stab yourself
(17:03):
in the stomach, in your belly with a short sword,
and then you cut across, turning the blade upwards, slicing
open your stomach. It's almost like disemboweling yourself. And then
if I'm not mistaken, it requires a buddy who then
chops your head off, or at least in some I've seen. Yeah, yeah,
(17:24):
kaisha kunen they're called uh yeah. You can read more
what is sepuku and history dot Com by Evan Andrews.
But yes, he was serious about this, and and think
of his think of his poor kid. There's a lot
to find out, right, one day, your dad says, I
have to look. I was in the war, as you know,
(17:44):
but I I bombed the United States. They've invited me
to come back. I'm taking this. I'm taking our family's sword,
and I'm going to commit grizzly suicide if they don't
accept my apology. That's a lot for a Tuesday, you
know what I mean, no joke, Yeah, I mean it's
(18:06):
almost a flex in a way. I mean, I get it.
I appreciate the sentiment, but man, not necessary. You know.
Water under the bridge been thankfully. Thankfully that's what it was,
and town welcomed him and appreciate it. The gesture so
much the local churches and businesses actually raised money to
help him come visit in nineteen sixty two, essentially gave
(18:28):
him the key to the city. He was made Grand
Marshal of the Azalea Festival, which sounds delightful, and he even,
single out of his own pocket, paid for students from
Brookings to go to Japan as well, so almost started
like a little exchange you know, foreign exchange student kind
of situation. He also donated money to the town's library
for kids books on Japan and their culture. Hopefully got
(18:51):
one on Sepaku for kids, because that that that's important
to know about. I think I remember that from the
Scholastic Bookarah really colorful stories. It was in the style
of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Yeah. Uh, and the Tugrod
Adventure version is kind of grim though, so be Warren folks.
Uh godda loa Scholassic book fairs and book it well anyway,
(19:14):
so this is so this is so beautiful, it's so wholesome.
He did, by the way, present the sword even if
they didn't want to accept it. It was kind of
like he felt obligated to do so, and it is
to this day in the city hall. It's displayed in
the library of the city Hall. He was made an
(19:35):
honorary citizen of the town shortly before he passed away
in and per him and his family's request, some of
his ashes were buried at the bombing site when he
he donated the sword in nineteen sixty two, and he
had just a beautiful quote about it. Do you do
(19:57):
you want to do the honors? Know? I sure do,
he said. It's in the finest Samurai tradition to pledge
peace and friendship by presenting a sword to a former enemy. Wonderful.
And you know, this period of time is so full
of obscure stories and ridiculous history. You know, we uh,
if you're interested, we have a another story about a
(20:19):
failed assault on mainland US by Japanese forces. It's an
episode we did a while back. The concept was novel,
though it was ultimately unsuccessful. It was the fire balloons.
You remember that one. Yeah, I believe they're called FuGO
balloon bombs, which is a lighter than air balloon. You
know that it has a payload of essentially an anti
(20:43):
personnel bomb that are only about twenty six pounds. Uh.
They're incendiary bombs. They're essentially their fire bombs. Uh. And
it's I believe it detects altitude and once they dropped
to a certain altitude, the payload is released. It's really interesting.
In the episode we talk about sort of the mechanism
behind it and how that works and uses like a
(21:04):
like a very simple altimeter. Uh. And these types of
weapons can be very useful, especially you know in back
in the day when you know a lot of homes
and things were built out of very flammable material, and
if you had like a convoy of these things. The
clusters of them, they could really do some serious damage. Yeah,
and they're the interesting fact, they're the first ever intercontinental weapon.
(21:29):
They're the ancestor of uh I c B s, that's right.
And they weren't particularly effective, as you can imagine. I mean,
it is very little fi, low fi technology. And they
released them UM in a handful of these around Alaska
and Alberta, Canada, Arizona, British Columbia, California. Why why are
they messing with Canada during all this? What do they
have to do with anything? I guess their allies uh Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mexico, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,
(21:55):
North Dakota, Oregon. There's Oregon getting them getting hit again,
South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and the Yukon Territory. UM.
They launched around nine thousand of these things throughout the project,
and they were hoping that around nine hundred of them
would release would actually reach America, but I think only
three hundred did because they literally it was like a
(22:17):
kind of spray balloon. Yeah, it's gonna go with the
jet stream, gonna get guided and then like you know,
you throw a bunch of them at the wall and hopefully,
you know, a handful of them stick, but they did
not meet their predicted expectations. I mean, who are we
to judge? That's basically what we do with uh, with
our show, hoping a few of these will stick in
your mind and you'll have some weird facts to throw
(22:39):
out with your friends at parties and gatherings. I was
thinking a lot about balloons recently because we had a
balloon launch as a memorial for thinking of my family,
and I know that they can be kind of controversial
because you don't know where the balloons will end up
or what they what they might end up doing. But
(23:00):
we also have here in Atlanta, we have a really
cool lantern parade every year and sometimes and people also
will release those lanterns that fly up based on the
you know, the heat admitted by the candle. Is that
how it works? Is that correct? I think that's right, Yeah, exactly,
It creates heat and the hot air rises, so it
(23:21):
pushes them up and they all go up in in
a flurry. And that's really kind of a beautiful site.
I believe that's coming up not too far. We're kind
of entering festival and parade season here in Atlanta. I
went to the Inmand Park Festival over the weekend and
saw a great parade, and it was my first one
of the season left for everyone likes a good parade,
uh and a good festival. So hopefully you're taking some
in around your neck of the woods and men, isn't
(23:42):
there a balloon festival or some sort of a hot
air balloon that we've talked with. We've threatened to go
check it out together, but I can't remember where it's not.
It's in Norcross, I think, right, yeah, I think it all.
It may have already happened this year. It is held
every no, it's coming up. It's this May. I just
checked it. Okay, So it's the end of May, Friday
(24:04):
May seven to Sunday, May twenty nine. That's the regular
balloon festival. Then there's a hot air balloon festival the
same weekend in Gwynette. I don't know if the Atlanta
Balloon Festival lets you fly in the balloons, but would
love to get up in one. I think we talked
about it, you Max, you were you were the most
(24:27):
reticent on that one. Right. I'm doing absolutely I think
I think, I think Nolan I were both like the bottom.
Go with God, my friend. I will watch you, pray,
pray for your well being and safe returnament con candy.
I'll be munching on it while I watched you go
up there. I am not getting up there at all.
I get in the air and I freak out. You're
(24:48):
not even you don't even like fights, right, you're not
a huge air travel fan. I'm fine with it gets going.
I mean, I'm claustrophobic and afraid of heights, so like
planes just kind of like make me like pretty uncomfortable.
But like like if I'm at somebody's apartment it's like
five stories up, we're going on the balcony. I'm like, no, no,
not not doing this, tuff. I'm okay with with heights
as long as it's been closed and I feel like
(25:09):
it's sturdy, but like a basket. Are you kidding me? Oh? Yeah,
what is life if not to be lived? Well, you
know what, at least you guys told me before the
three of us were walking up to the balloon, when
the two at which point the two of you would
have been, would have dipped back and said, hey, take
some pictures, all right, see you man? Um, So I'll
(25:31):
take some too from the ground, buddy. To be honest,
at least, we've not told you this twice. We have
this on record. Yeah, yeah, you've got the receipts. Take
get it. But barring our ballooning adventures, we know this
one was maybe a little shorter than usual. But we
thought it was so wholesome and it was such a
(25:53):
beautiful human moment, a beautiful ending to a story that
could have been horrific and tragic. We hope you enjoyed
this as much as we did. We can't wait to
hear your accounts of other strange stories largely left out
of textbooks. So let us know, let us know your
cool stories. You can find us on the internet, not
just as a show, but as individuals. That's right, you
(26:16):
can find us as individuals. I am exclusively on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown? How about you? Ben? You
can find me on Instagram, where I'm getting into any
number of ill informed escapades and adventures. You can learn
more about that balloon launch and follow me at at
Ben Bulling bow l I N. You can also find
me on Twitter if you want to look at some
(26:38):
of the research on and off the record that I'm
getting into over there. Bonus points for following me on
Twitter Appen Bullen hs W is that you will also
inevitably run into Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can find
me at at l Underscore Max Williams, where you know,
I'll just be tweeting about stuff I like and stuff sports.
(27:01):
Sure why not? Or no scores just scores, just spores
and there are a lot out there to discover. Anyway,
story for another day. Thanks to you, Max, thanks to
Eve's Jeff Coat, thanks to Casey Pegram, Christopher Ossiotis you're
in spirit returning soon? Um, I don't know. You think
Jonathan strictly Decay the Quister would go up into balloon
with me. I'm gonna say no, Yeah, I'm with you.
(27:22):
It's the soft note from me dot. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
super producer. Give it up for him. His name is
Max Williams. They called me, they called me Ben. Uh No.
I think everybody at some point in their life has
needed to make a heartfelt apology. It can be difficult,
(00:49):
but it's it's an important thing to do and usually
you'll be the better for it. Well, let me take
this as an opportunity to make a heartfelt apology to you. Ben.
It was I that ate your leftover verse in the
uh the office fridge. Now, to be fair, they've been
in there for months. I probably got definitely ill as
a result of eating them. So that was my own
(01:10):
come uppance. And you probably forgotten about them in the
first place. And yet somehow I feel the need to
make a big to do about apologizing. Your name was
on it, Ben, and I disregarded that, And uh, is
that a true story? No, it's not a true story,
but it's okay story. You're not a leftover lever, Ben.
You know your know thyself. I feel like you know
(01:32):
you can apologize to me. Yeah, for drinking all your
your nice whiskey. No, no, for you know just call
me your nemesis on every podcast despite not doing anything
to you. Well, I mean that's all that's debatable to you.
How does one do something to someone you know? And
I see how it is. Yeah, No, I do apologize.
I drink. I drink a lot of your fancy whiskey
one time, and then I do apologize for that while
(01:54):
I was watching curling. Well, now that we're all uh,
now that we're all good, I will of one example. Uh,
this is old school how stuff works lore. I hope
I don't get in too much trouble for this. But
I did have a fridge thief fridge thief interaction many
years ago at our old office and Buckhead. I had
saved half of the Philly cheese steak sandwich on a Friday,
(02:18):
and I came in to the office on the weekend
because I was always I still always I'm going in
on the weekend, and uh, I found that my Philly
cheese steak was missing, and I was on a mission
to figure out who did it. So I started investigating.
I hit the streets or the hallways and the cubicles,
and I eventually learned that my cheese steak had been
(02:39):
taken none other by none other than my dear friend,
a good friend of the show, Josh Clark in his advance.
In his defense, he did come clean when I asked him,
and he said, why do you care? And I said,
because it's it's like beyond a party, foul man, you
you ate my cheese steak. And he did feel kind
of bad, but I do think it was. It was hilarious.
(03:02):
So every time I look at Josh, I still think
that guy owes me half a cheese steak. Yeah, it was.
It was it good. I mean, cheese steaks don't really
keep super well, to be fair, That's why I was
in the day after he moved quick. It was. It
was clearly half an eaten cheese steak wrapped in foil.
(03:24):
It's like, clearly not something left over from a party.
That's just up for grabs. But anyway, forgiveness, apologies. That's
what this story is about. And this I thought I
had had a wholesome ending. So this is this is
an interesting, fascinating tale from history. It does have some
ridiculous moments, but we can't wait to dive in. Let's
(03:47):
start with a tragedy. If you live in the US,
you are well aware of the events of Pearl Harbor
on December seven, nineteen forty one. And if you don't
live in the US. Want a primery, you should watch
the Michael Bay documentary Pearl Harbor um starring uh what's
his name? Yeah, that's right. It's apparently quite bad, but yeah,
(04:13):
it's it was a big deal. It's it was a
big deal. It was one of the only times we've
actually been directly attacked, you know, on American soil. Nine
eleven is often compared to Pearl Harbor. Yeah, yeah, but
I love you point this out. It was one of
the only times, but it was not the only time
the US was under air attack by Japanese forces. If
(04:34):
you go to September nine, there was a Japanese float
plane piloted by an officer named Nobu Fujita, which took
off from a submarine that was off Cape Blanco on
the southwestern Oregon coast. And this attack occurs in the
context of a couple of other attacks earlier that year.
(04:59):
In February twenty three, nineteen forty two, there was an
attack on the Elwood oil field outside of Santa Barbara,
and this attack sparked a panicked in the US populace.
They were not used to dealing with war on the
home front because you know, the US is geographically quite
fortunate in terms of uh its security. There are two
(05:21):
massive oceans on either side, too friendly countries to the
south and the north. It's hard to get here if
you are an army that is attempting to attack. So
people are still very concerned, Like I, I think you're
nine eleven. Comparison is pretty aptinal because you remember, in
(05:41):
the aftermath the attack on September eleven, two thousand and one,
people all over the country were worried that their town,
no matter how big or small, might be the next target.
And that's kind of how people were feeling during World
War Two. They thought Japanese forces would be able to
get past the ocean, would be able to touch them
(06:03):
on home soil. This was not a crazy fear, you know,
it didn't come out of the blue. There were several attacks,
as we have mentioned, and at this time the Imperial
Japanese Navy was super formidable. It was actually the most
powerful navy on the planet. During the Pearl Harbor attacks.
(06:24):
It had the biggest, most heavily armed battleships ever built,
the Yamato and the Musashi, and their naval aviation was
super awesome. Japanese forces made the largest submarines of World
War Two. They could carry their own aircraft, which might
sound pretty crazy today. And this I to five submarine
(06:45):
we're talking about how his surprise that submarines today do
not possess. They had planes that can fly from the
sub and then fly back to the sub. They were
retrievable usable they did this by folding up. The technology
is amazing. But that's where that's where our story takes place.
(07:08):
The we can talk about the stats sum if you want. Uh,
it was pretty big. Seventeen torpedoes had a naval gun
hundred forty millimeters individuals aboard, and it had one Yokosuka
E one four y sea plane. The Allied forces called
this the Glen and this was responsible for the only
(07:32):
attack on a mainland American military site during World War Two.
So the other one that wasn't Pearl Harbor. Yeah, And
on June twenty one two along the Oregon coastline. This
was the only mainland attack of an American military site
(07:54):
during World War Two. Uh, and it was along the
Oregon coastline, and um, there wasn't a American fishing vessel.
Uh that the Japanese submarine I very sneakily used to
evade capture, to evade detection, they kind of what would
you say, Ben, kind of tailed them a little bit,
I guess, or you know, it's sort of the equivalent
(08:14):
of like drafting someone in Mario Kart, or if you
hang out behind them, it's sort of like guards you
from others and even pick up a little extra steam.
That wouldn't have been the case here, but certainly would
have been a way to keep under the radar as
it were, because I mean they would have seen the
fishing vessel and maybe not paid attention to what was
close around. But its surfaced around Fort Stevens, which was
(08:36):
a kind of long in the tooth army base that
actually dated back to the Civil War, so it was
in really poor uh state, needed some TLC. But just
before midnight the ive used, Um it's above deck weapon
like a gatling gun kind of thing, or I don't know, Ben,
when you say it's a hundred and forty millimeters, So
(08:58):
is that like shells. There's that like we would you
call that like an ordinance, like a like a larger
scale mortar situation, or it's somewhere in between just regular
machine gun shells and larger ordinance, right, yeah, I would
call it. I would say, think of it like a
tank gun. So not a massive mortar around, but somewhere
(09:21):
in between, like an anti aircraft gun or something like that,
or a tank gun like you said. And they shot
seventeen of those forty millimeter bad boys at that fort,
and the commander of Fort Stevens actually ordered his men
not to return fire because he didn't want to give
away their positions, and he thought that the flashes from
the gun muzzles of the installations there on the fort
(09:45):
would have revealed that. And this, you know, apparently worked.
At first, I was kind of like, well, well, why
why did this matter? Because but again, because of the size,
the medium size of the rounds that are being fired
by the Japanese, they needed to be able to focus
um into areas where they were actually going to kill personnel,
because this wouldn't have been enough to like take down
(10:06):
the whole fort, for example. So by kind of hiding
their positions, they essentially rendered the attack a little bit
null and void. So instead a nearby baseball field actually
took a lot of the damage. Yeah yeah, which been
the bombardment wasn't very successful. The Fort Stevens plan worked.
But this just goes to show you how how good
(10:28):
the I was at getting close enough to do some damage.
And forgive me, fellow ridiculous historians. Every time I'm saying night,
I know it's the submarine, but it keeps making me
think of interstates. So the submarine, which is not an interstate,
makes history again when it does the first ever bombing
(10:50):
of the mainland continental United States by an enemy aircraft.
This is collectively known as the Lookout air raids. Now,
this is where we share a guy. Warrant officer Nabu Fujita.
His commander, Meijitagami, tells the crew to deploy that aircraft
were talking about, the Glenn. Armed with two pretty big
(11:11):
and century bombs sixty eight pounds each. Fujita is flying
under the cover of darkness, crosses onto dry land. The
idea is that if they dropped these incendiary bombs in
the right place, they can maybe start a forest fire
and have people in a panic. I wanna shout out
(11:32):
a couple of sources here. Of course history dot com
several articles from there, and of course Civilian Military Intelligence Group.
This comes from a blog post, but it's worth checking
out because it has pictures where you can see the
actual submarine we're describing, as well as the plane that
Fujita was flying. Americans didn't realize they were under attack
(11:54):
for a while. Uh. Some people have heard the ship,
heard the plane while they were on the ground. It
wasn't until six in the morning the next morning that
a U. S. Forest Service guy named Howard Gardner was
at the Mount Emily fire lookout and spotted the plane.
He said the engine sounded like a Model T backfiring
(12:17):
and he called it in and no one. No one
thought it was a threat. They were like, look, this
is just some guy in a plane. He's over the
wilderness in the middle of nowhere. Cool your jets, gardener,
pump your brakes. Watched the forest and another really good
resource to check out, by the way, is a site
called now I Know dot com. Uh, and there is
an article from about the lookout area which was actually
(12:40):
about to get into so later that day the forest
fires were discovered, and this UH Forest Service ranger guy,
I guess he went to check it out, and they
initially thought that lightning had caused them. They later found
a crater and they can only have been caused by
bomb fragments or bombing from airings. And eventually they found
(13:01):
the nose cone of the bomb and of course had
tell tale markings on it that indicated that they were
of Japanese origin. UH. Three weeks later, on September twenty nine,
early in the morning, Fujita led a second round of attacks.
He dropped two more bombs into the forest near Port Orford,
which around fifty miles up the coast from Brookings, Oregon.
(13:24):
And again the planes were sighted. Yeah, yeah, they found them,
and the U. S. Forest Service employees also described things
that sound like bombs, flashes, smoke. They searched the area,
they don't find anything, and they say, okay, you know
what probably happened. There's probably a small wildfire that burned
(13:45):
out because the forest is so damp. So again they
go back to that other explanation, lightning strikes. They say
they don't find any fragments, bombs. They don't release any
information about this until the next year. Uh, and let's
look at Fujita. This is where I think the story
gets really really interesting. So Fugita himself, Yeah, he very wholesome. Yes,
(14:10):
he he survives until the end of World War Two
and all the you know, horrors that happened in Japan
at that time. He eventually opens a hardware store near
Tokyo and like the kind of Tokyo suburbs. Unfortunately, the
hardware store goes bankrupt later and he takes a job
(14:30):
where he works at a wire company for a pretty
long time, and he doesn't really talk about his time
in the military. It doesn't come up. And if you've
ever had a veteran in your family from any war,
you know that often people have survived war, it's not
their first topic of conversation, and understandably so. So it
(14:51):
came to pass that Fujita's entire family had no idea
that he attacked to the US mainland until in ninety
sixty two he gets invited to Brookings, the place he
tried to bomb, and Uh, the Japanese government takes a
minute and they say, okay, we gotta figure out if
they're gonna try you as a war criminal. And they
(15:13):
say all right, we get the vibe that they're not
going to try as a war criminal, and so he says, okay,
I'm gonna go, and he takes along with him his
family's samurai sword. It's been in his family for four
hundred years. His plan is, look, I'm gonna present this
to the town as an apology from my attack, and
(15:34):
if they don't accept my apology, I'm going to commit sepuku,
a ritual suicide. That is intense, man. I mean, it's
it's not uncommon. I mean, you know, in the if
a Japanese, a very proud Japanese person is shamed in
some way or brings Sina's being a shame on their family,
this thing is absolutely on the table. His daughter, your
(15:58):
Eko A Sukar told The New York Times in an
interview quote, he thought perhaps people would still be angry
and would throw eggs at him if that happened. As
a Japanese, he wanted to take responsibility for what he
had done. That's a pretty heavy way of taking responsibility.
So I just just understand, I mean, he's apologizing, or
(16:19):
he's he's regretful because he made a mistake, or because
he did not agree with the mission of the war anymore.
I I think the idea is that he's a he's
officially no. Apologies are a big, big thing in that culture,
so I think he is. His motivation, if we could guess,
(16:39):
is to apologize for possibly putting civilians in danger, possibly
destroying you know, wilderness, and it's his way of making
peace or atoning. We should talk about sepuko if no one,
if if you're not aware of it, ridiculous historians. It's
sometimes called Harry Carey in the in the West, and
it is super grizzly. It starts by you stab yourself
(17:03):
in the stomach, in your belly with a short sword,
and then you cut across, turning the blade upwards, slicing
open your stomach. It's almost like disemboweling yourself. And then
if I'm not mistaken, it requires a buddy who then
chops your head off, or at least in some I've seen. Yeah, yeah,
(17:24):
kaisha kunen they're called uh yeah. You can read more
what is sepuku and history dot Com by Evan Andrews.
But yes, he was serious about this, and and think
of his think of his poor kid. There's a lot
to find out, right, one day, your dad says, I
have to look. I was in the war, as you know,
(17:44):
but I I bombed the United States. They've invited me
to come back. I'm taking this. I'm taking our family's sword,
and I'm going to commit grizzly suicide if they don't
accept my apology. That's a lot for a Tuesday, you
know what I mean, no joke, Yeah, I mean it's
(18:06):
almost a flex in a way. I mean, I get it.
I appreciate the sentiment, but man, not necessary. You know.
Water under the bridge been thankfully. Thankfully that's what it was,
and town welcomed him and appreciate it. The gesture so
much the local churches and businesses actually raised money to
help him come visit in nineteen sixty two, essentially gave
(18:28):
him the key to the city. He was made Grand
Marshal of the Azalea Festival, which sounds delightful, and he even,
single out of his own pocket, paid for students from
Brookings to go to Japan as well, so almost started
like a little exchange you know, foreign exchange student kind
of situation. He also donated money to the town's library
for kids books on Japan and their culture. Hopefully got
(18:51):
one on Sepaku for kids, because that that that's important
to know about. I think I remember that from the
Scholastic Bookarah really colorful stories. It was in the style
of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Yeah. Uh, and the Tugrod
Adventure version is kind of grim though, so be Warren folks.
Uh godda loa Scholassic book fairs and book it well anyway,
(19:14):
so this is so this is so beautiful, it's so wholesome.
He did, by the way, present the sword even if
they didn't want to accept it. It was kind of
like he felt obligated to do so, and it is
to this day in the city hall. It's displayed in
the library of the city Hall. He was made an
(19:35):
honorary citizen of the town shortly before he passed away
in and per him and his family's request, some of
his ashes were buried at the bombing site when he
he donated the sword in nineteen sixty two, and he
had just a beautiful quote about it. Do you do
(19:57):
you want to do the honors? Know? I sure do,
he said. It's in the finest Samurai tradition to pledge
peace and friendship by presenting a sword to a former enemy. Wonderful.
And you know, this period of time is so full
of obscure stories and ridiculous history. You know, we uh,
if you're interested, we have a another story about a
(20:19):
failed assault on mainland US by Japanese forces. It's an
episode we did a while back. The concept was novel,
though it was ultimately unsuccessful. It was the fire balloons.
You remember that one. Yeah, I believe they're called FuGO
balloon bombs, which is a lighter than air balloon. You
know that it has a payload of essentially an anti
(20:43):
personnel bomb that are only about twenty six pounds. Uh.
They're incendiary bombs. They're essentially their fire bombs. Uh. And
it's I believe it detects altitude and once they dropped
to a certain altitude, the payload is released. It's really interesting.
In the episode we talk about sort of the mechanism
behind it and how that works and uses like a
(21:04):
like a very simple altimeter. Uh. And these types of
weapons can be very useful, especially you know in back
in the day when you know a lot of homes
and things were built out of very flammable material, and
if you had like a convoy of these things. The
clusters of them, they could really do some serious damage. Yeah,
and they're the interesting fact, they're the first ever intercontinental weapon.
(21:29):
They're the ancestor of uh I c B s, that's right.
And they weren't particularly effective, as you can imagine. I mean,
it is very little fi, low fi technology. And they
released them UM in a handful of these around Alaska
and Alberta, Canada, Arizona, British Columbia, California. Why why are
they messing with Canada during all this? What do they
have to do with anything? I guess their allies uh Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mexico, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,
(21:55):
North Dakota, Oregon. There's Oregon getting them getting hit again,
South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and the Yukon Territory. UM.
They launched around nine thousand of these things throughout the project,
and they were hoping that around nine hundred of them
would release would actually reach America, but I think only
three hundred did because they literally it was like a
(22:17):
kind of spray balloon. Yeah, it's gonna go with the
jet stream, gonna get guided and then like you know,
you throw a bunch of them at the wall and hopefully,
you know, a handful of them stick, but they did
not meet their predicted expectations. I mean, who are we
to judge? That's basically what we do with uh, with
our show, hoping a few of these will stick in
your mind and you'll have some weird facts to throw
(22:39):
out with your friends at parties and gatherings. I was
thinking a lot about balloons recently because we had a
balloon launch as a memorial for thinking of my family,
and I know that they can be kind of controversial
because you don't know where the balloons will end up
or what they what they might end up doing. But
(23:00):
we also have here in Atlanta, we have a really
cool lantern parade every year and sometimes and people also
will release those lanterns that fly up based on the
you know, the heat admitted by the candle. Is that
how it works? Is that correct? I think that's right, Yeah, exactly,
It creates heat and the hot air rises, so it
(23:21):
pushes them up and they all go up in in
a flurry. And that's really kind of a beautiful site.
I believe that's coming up not too far. We're kind
of entering festival and parade season here in Atlanta. I
went to the Inmand Park Festival over the weekend and
saw a great parade, and it was my first one
of the season left for everyone likes a good parade,
uh and a good festival. So hopefully you're taking some
in around your neck of the woods and men, isn't
(23:42):
there a balloon festival or some sort of a hot
air balloon that we've talked with. We've threatened to go
check it out together, but I can't remember where it's not.
It's in Norcross, I think, right, yeah, I think it all.
It may have already happened this year. It is held
every no, it's coming up. It's this May. I just
checked it. Okay, So it's the end of May, Friday
(24:04):
May seven to Sunday, May twenty nine. That's the regular
balloon festival. Then there's a hot air balloon festival the
same weekend in Gwynette. I don't know if the Atlanta
Balloon Festival lets you fly in the balloons, but would
love to get up in one. I think we talked
about it, you Max, you were you were the most
(24:27):
reticent on that one. Right. I'm doing absolutely I think
I think, I think Nolan I were both like the bottom.
Go with God, my friend. I will watch you, pray,
pray for your well being and safe returnament con candy.
I'll be munching on it while I watched you go
up there. I am not getting up there at all.
I get in the air and I freak out. You're
(24:48):
not even you don't even like fights, right, you're not
a huge air travel fan. I'm fine with it gets going.
I mean, I'm claustrophobic and afraid of heights, so like
planes just kind of like make me like pretty uncomfortable.
But like like if I'm at somebody's apartment it's like
five stories up, we're going on the balcony. I'm like, no, no,
not not doing this, tuff. I'm okay with with heights
as long as it's been closed and I feel like
(25:09):
it's sturdy, but like a basket. Are you kidding me? Oh? Yeah,
what is life if not to be lived? Well, you
know what, at least you guys told me before the
three of us were walking up to the balloon, when
the two at which point the two of you would
have been, would have dipped back and said, hey, take
some pictures, all right, see you man? Um, So I'll
(25:31):
take some too from the ground, buddy. To be honest,
at least, we've not told you this twice. We have
this on record. Yeah, yeah, you've got the receipts. Take
get it. But barring our ballooning adventures, we know this
one was maybe a little shorter than usual. But we
thought it was so wholesome and it was such a
(25:53):
beautiful human moment, a beautiful ending to a story that
could have been horrific and tragic. We hope you enjoyed
this as much as we did. We can't wait to
hear your accounts of other strange stories largely left out
of textbooks. So let us know, let us know your
cool stories. You can find us on the internet, not
just as a show, but as individuals. That's right, you
(26:16):
can find us as individuals. I am exclusively on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown? How about you? Ben? You
can find me on Instagram, where I'm getting into any
number of ill informed escapades and adventures. You can learn
more about that balloon launch and follow me at at
Ben Bulling bow l I N. You can also find
me on Twitter if you want to look at some
(26:38):
of the research on and off the record that I'm
getting into over there. Bonus points for following me on
Twitter Appen Bullen hs W is that you will also
inevitably run into Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can find
me at at l Underscore Max Williams, where you know,
I'll just be tweeting about stuff I like and stuff sports.
(27:01):
Sure why not? Or no scores just scores, just spores
and there are a lot out there to discover. Anyway,
story for another day. Thanks to you, Max, thanks to
Eve's Jeff Coat, thanks to Casey Pegram, Christopher Ossiotis you're
in spirit returning soon? Um, I don't know. You think
Jonathan strictly Decay the Quister would go up into balloon
with me. I'm gonna say no, Yeah, I'm with you.
(27:22):
It's the soft note from me dot. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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