balloonBombsValley City  (CSi) The Barnes County Historical Society Lecture Series Proudly Presents:  Valley City native Ross Coen: “Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan’s Balloon Bomb Attack on America” Thursday August 27th at the Barnes County Museum at 7pm.

Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis. Two balloons landed in North Dakota. While the fu-go offensive proved to be a complete tactical failure, six Americans lost their lives when a discovered balloon exploded.

Ross Coen provides a look into the obscure history of the fu-go campaign, from the Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand to the generals in the U.S. War Department who developed defense procedures. The book delves into panic, propaganda, and media censorship in wartime. Fu-go is a compelling story of a little-known episode in our national history that unfolded virtually unseen.

A Valley City native, Ross Coen is a PhD student in History at the University of Washington where he studies the intersections of politics, technology, science, and environment in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century North American West. His dissertation focuses on a cultural and scientific history of North Pacific salmon fisheries from 1880 to 1960. He is the author of three books, most recently Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan’s Balloon Bomb Attack on America from University of Nebraska Press (2014), and his published work has appeared in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, The Northern Review, Alaska History, Alaska Magazine, and other publications.

The public is cordially invited

All Lectures are at the Barnes County Historical Society Museum and held in conjunction with Valley City State University.  They are free and open to the public.

For more information contact Wes Anderson at 701-845-0966

Barnes County Historical Society

315 Central Ave N

Valley City, ND 58072