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Younghusband
Author

Younghusband

Date

December 3rd, 2005

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WWII Military trivia

Q: What was unique about World War II Japanese pilot Nobu Fujita?

A: He was the only enemy pilot to bomb the continental United States.

Comments to this entry

Alexander Karatis
December 3, 2005
9:49 am
Quite interesting! Where/when/how did this happen?

Wikipedia/Google turn up nothing on him BTW...
Dan
December 3, 2005
1:12 pm
Was he involved with the balloon bombs?
Hunter
December 3, 2005
2:27 pm
is this him?

Sept. 9-10 — A Japanese floatplane flies two missions, dropping firebombs on U.S. forests in Oregon — the only bombing of the continental U.S. during the war. Newspapers in the U.S. voluntarily withhold this information.
Joe
December 3, 2005
4:02 pm
The only reason he doesn't who up on Wikipedia is because "you left a key vowel out of his name.":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita
Younghusband
December 3, 2005
4:37 pm
Thanks Joe.

I once saw a Discovery Channel special on the sub-launched floatplane. Some pretty wikked kit!
Curzon
December 3, 2005
5:35 pm
What a great story (from the Wikipedia article):

Fujita would be invited back to Brookings in 1962, and he presented to the town his family's 400-year-old samurai sword in friendship after the Japanese government was assured he would not be tried as a war criminal.

Impressed by his welcome in the United States, Fujita invited three female students from Brookings to Japan in 1985. He later received a dedicatory letter from President Ronald Reagan "with admiration for your kindness and generosity."
sun bin
December 3, 2005
7:15 pm
"firebombs on U.S. forests "

the enemy of earth! greenpeace should sue him :)
Joe
December 3, 2005
7:25 pm
No prob. No fault to you, since I left a key consonant out of the word "show" :D
Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace
December 3, 2005
9:44 pm
An often forgotten part of the war was the Japanese bombing of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians... a bizarre attempt to invade the US starting as far left as possible! They did indeed make beachheads on Kiska and Attu islands, and the US Eleventh Air Force dropped almost 27,000 bombs (on US territory!!) before US and Canadian marines landed and eventually evicted them. http://www.nps.gov/aleu/WWII_in_the_Aleutians.htm
Nathan
December 3, 2005
11:29 pm
I'm surprised it wasn't in the Wikipedia entry, but if I recall correctly, the attack was intended to duplicate the horrendous damage of the Tillamook Burn, which was actually created by two different fires prior to the war. A third fire in 1945 is suspected to have been caused by a Japanese incendiary bomb.