Death dealt by balloon
QUESTION
Was an American family killed by a Japanese balloon bomb that crossed the Pacific? THIS incident happened on May 5, 1945, in Southern Oregon. The victims were a pregnant woman and five students aged 13 to 14. The students were Jay Gifford, Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker and Dick and Joan Patzke. The pregnant woman was Mrs Elyse Mitchell, who was a Sunday school teacher.
The Rev Archie Mitchell was driving his wife Elyse and the students to a picnic along a mountain road. Mrs Mitchell became carsick and they pulled in.
Rev Mitchell chatted to a road crew while his wife and the students wandered from the car. When they were about 100 yards away, his wife called out: ‘Look what I’ve found, Dear.’ Immediately there was a loud explosion.
The Rev and the roadworkers ran over to discover that all but Joan Patzke were dead, and she died a few minutes later. There was a small crater in the ground.
The reason Mrs Mitchell and the students hadn’t appreciated what they’d found was because there was a news blackout on the balloons. This denied the Japanese any intelligence, but also left the public unaware of the danger.
More than 9,000 balloons were launched over five months when the winds were most favourable, and at least 342 arrived. There were no other reported casualties. One balloon hit a power line and temporarily blacked out a nuclear weapons plant.
The Japanese developed the balloons to attack the US, which was beyond the range of their aircraft. The balloons were 10 metres in diameter and could carry either a single 15kg high-explosive bomb, or a number of incendiaries.
The balloons flew at an altitude of between 9.1km and 11.5km so travelled in the jet stream eastward for 1,000km to America where it was hoped they would start forest fires and cause panic.
Most of the balloons were launched by the Japanese Army. The balloon envelopes were made of three to four layers of paper held together with glue made of potatoes. The glue was edible and the Japanese schoolgirls who made the balloons would eat it to alleviate the hunger pangs caused by food shortages in Japan.
Denis Sharp, Hailsham, East Sussex.
QUESTION
Does anyone know the name of a short film which came out in the 1960s where aliens observe life on Earth and describe ‘motor-vehicle’ people – with the vehicles themselves mistaken as the actual Earthlings – who leave their homes every morning in procession and make loud noises as they slowly travel to work, repeating the process later in the day? ‘IS there intelligent life in Space? Last week we discovered that we are not alone. With this film the
door to the universe opens for every Martian!’
So begins the clever short film, What On Earth! The Automobile Inherits The Planet, made in 1966 by the National Film Board of Canada.
Delivered as a public-service piece to the inhabitants of Mars, life on Earth is portrayed as an unending line of cars, the extraterrestrials assuming they are the dominant race.
The 50-year-old commentary on the reign of cars is still as relevant as ever today.
In the opening scene, a car pulls up at a petrol pump and the voiceover states: ‘Here we see him at dinner, a carefully regulated meal, after which he takes shelter for the night. He needs his rest.’
As for humans, we are just a disease: ‘It seems odd that such a highly developed civilisation has
not found a way to combat para- sites, these pesky little creatures build huge hives or nests (houses and flats) which often slow down or prevent the orderly progress of the Earthling.’
It’s very entertaining and can be seen on the National Film Board of Canada’s website, which features other shorts by animators Les Drew and Kaj Pindal.
The film is both a stark reminder of the persistent primacy of automobiles and a prediction of what that could look like in the near future.
Louis Hobson, Sheffield.
QUESTION
Is the sport of Gaelic handball popular anywhere outside Ireland? IRISH handball has overtaken football and hurling as the most popular Gaelic game played abroad, quite an achievement for a sport that went under the radar for so long.
These days, not only is the Irish version of handball widely exported, but Ireland is also closely linked into the many countries around the world that are involved in playing internationalstyle handball.
Altogether, there are four main types of handball played in Ireland, the softball and hardball versions played in the traditional big alley, the more modern small court, and one-wall.
In the past three or four years, one-wall handball has become very popular here, and it’s also the most popular version of handball internationally.
Seán Moore, William Street, Limerick city.
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