Japanese Seaplane Bombs Oregon Forests

Less than two months after its bombardment of the fortifications of Fort Stevens, Japanese submarine I-25 struck the American West Coast again, this time from the air.   On the morning of 9 September 1942, two Japanese airmen boarded their Yokosuka E14Y “Glen” aircraft – a tiny seaplane with folding wings that was stored in a small hangar beneath the submarine’s deck – and flew towards the tiny coastal logging town of Brookings, just north of the California-Oregon border.  Armed with two 168-pound incendiary bombs, the Japanese objective was to deposit their payload in the Siskiyou National Forest surrounding Brookings in the hopes of igniting massive wildfires in Oregon and mass panic across the West Coast.  While one of the two incendiaries dropped did succeed in starting a small blaze, the Japanese raiders were observed by two U.S. Forest Service fire lookouts who quickly radioed for help and had the fires under control and extinguished by the following morning.
 

Although a tactical failure and seemingly insignificant in the amount of damage done, the September 9^th raids, now known as the Lookout Air Raids, marked the first and to date only time the continental United States has been bombed by enemy aircraft.
 

The Japanese pilot who led the Lookout Air Raids, Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita, survived the war and, in 1962, accepted an invitation from the citizens of Brookings to revisit the very community he had been assigned to destroy twenty years earlier.  Ashamed of his actions during the war, Fujita presented a 400-year-old samurai sword which he had carried throughout WWII to the town as a sign of his regret.  Fujita would make many further visits to his one-time target and, shortly before his death, would be named an honorary citizen of Brookings.

Post by Red Ball Express Coordinator Collin Makamson