Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 124

Some of the stories are more humorous—in the
slightly dark humor of war. One man tells of his ship
being chased across the sea by a U-boat. Disastrously,
the ship’s steering failed and the rudder jammed, which
caused the civilian merchant to accidentally come
about to face the oncoming warship! The submarine
captain, rather than finish them off quickly with a
torpedo, immediately submerged after apparently being
unnerved by a merchant bold enough to charge his
ship. In another story, sailors stranded in Russia decide
to only drink vodka that burned with a blue flame.
Upon testing a sample in an ashtray, the resulting
explosion shattered glass, and the mushroom cloud it
created convinced them they had a bad batch—so they
wisely decided not drink it.
All things considered, this book was an enjoyable
read and deserves a look. These men took enormous
risks and were vital to winning the war yet were denied
veterans assistance during and after the war. One sailor
described an encounter in Sicily when he entered a Red
Cross aid station to obtain clean drinking water, since
the city water was unsafe, and was shooed out by the
attendant who said, “You can’t come in here; this is for
our boys fighting this war!” It is perhaps an apt depiction of the merchant mariner’s battle for respect during
and after the war.
Lt. Cmdr. Harold A. Laurence, U.S. Navy,
Retired, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

FU-GO: The Curious History of Japan’s Balloon
Bomb Attack on America
Ross Coen, University of Nebraska Press,
Lincoln, Nebraska, 2014, 296 pages

F

ollowing Lt. Col. James Doolittle’s daring raid
against select Japanese cities in April 1942,
the Japanese Imperial army sought a means
of revenge against the U.S. population. In 1944, the
Japanese army developed a program codenamed
Fu-go, an abbreviated form of fusen bakuden (fire
balloons), that manufactured bomb-carrying balloons. The project sent hundreds of the balloons
aloft into the jet stream in late 1944 and early 1945.
The Japanese built the balloons to travel across the
Pacific Ocean to North America, where they hoped
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their bombs would start fires in the forests of the
western United States and thereby divert American
resources that might otherwise be directed against
Japan. Moreover, the Imperial army sought a means
to boost Japanese morale by demonstrating its ability
to strike the U.S. mainland and causing widespread
panic among the American populace.
Ross Coen’s monograph FU-GO: The Curious
History of Japan’s Balloon Bomb Attack on America
traces the development of this program as well as
the American and Canadian responses to it. Coen
argues that Fu-go “was a failed campaign to be sure.”
The balloons caused little damage, claimed only
six American lives, and, due in no small part to
American and Canadian censorship, failed to incite
any kind of panic among the populations of North
America. Indeed, Coen notes that the U.S. Office
of Scientific Research and Development concluded
in early 1945 that the cost of mounting any kind of
defense against the balloons would ultimately exceed
the cost of any damage they inflicted.
Coen, a historian of the American West, weaves
thorough research into a well-written narrative.
His description of the technical details of the balloons’ construction and the apparatus that kept each
one aloft is both fascinating and easily understood.
Furthermore, the book’s appendices chart the locations where all known Fu-go balloons or material
were found and provide the date and a description
of each recovery. Coen also highlights some important regional differences in the way in which balloon
sightings and recoveries were treated in the Western
United States, Alaska, and Canada, respectively,
ranging from tight censorship in the continental
United States to widesprea d awareness of the events
in Alaska.
Yet, Coen struggles to place the Fu-go program in
a larger strategic context. He labels the balloons “the
world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile” and
contends that they were “qualitatively no different
from the tons of napalm-filled incendiary bombs
dropped by American B-29s over Tokyo and other
cities across Japan.” However, Coen does not develop
this characterization, leaving both the implications
of the comparison and the overall significance of
the Fu-go program unexplained. Regardless, the
book is highly recommended for a general audience,
July-August 2015  MILITARY REVIEW