Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 17, 1945, in the middle of World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded in the sky over Omaha, Nebraska.

I will repeat that, a Japanese bomb explodes in the sky over Omaha, Nebraska.

As it happens throughout 1943, 44, 45, a great number of these types of Japanese bombs made their way onto US soil, or at least over US skies.

We think of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 41, of course, that brought the US into the war and then we think

that all the fighting took place elsewhere but these balloons were what one writer

would call the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile and they brought the war and

some casualties onto US soil. So let's talk about the Japanese balloon bombs in the

mid 40s and here to do that as always are Nicole Hemmer of Columbia and

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wosley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. So let's talk

about the actual balloons themselves and what these are and then we'll talk about the sort of strategy as it goes

into the war and how it played into it and kind of what it meant but you know when we say

balloon bomb Mickey how can you start to describe what that is?

Yeah so the thing that I picture are just like 99 loop balloons

floating over the US.

They're bigger than that, right?

Think a cross between a balloon and a blimp. They're 33 feet in diameter. They're paper and rubberized silk that are glued together in order to make these balloons in likelihood put together by school

children in Japan. One part of the story here is that the children hands were

the ones that were small in a field to stitch together the pieces to make this balloon an amazing

little school girl in this story.

It's a total war effort.

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