by
Austin BayJanuary 15, 2025
The Japanese called their intercontinental weapons "fusen bakudan" -- trans-Pacific balloon-delivered firebombs riding the trans-Pacific jet stream and targeting the U.S. West Coast in late 1944 and 1945.
That the "Fu-Go" offensive occurred and that it failed to do any significant damage are historical facts.
However, 2025's Los Angeles wildfires and their estimated $150 billion in damage suggest Japanese strategists had a conceptually valid offensive combat operation.
For the record, one balloon landed in the ocean just off San Pedro, California. San Pedro is South LA. San Pedro hasn't caught fire -- yet.
1945: Three Fu-Go balloons reached Iowa.
2024: A wind-powered Communist Chinese spy balloon traversed the U.S.
In light of the Ukraine War, we might think of these balloons as wind-powered drones. The World War II Japanese balloons were unguided bomber drones crudely aimed at large targets like U.S. national forests and anywhere in California. The Beijing balloon was a recon drone, gathering data for a future conflict.
No, this column isn't about balloon warfare. It's about American vulnerabilities a shrewd and vicious enemy would exploit and exploit cheaply and with plausible deniability -- like Imperial Japan tried to do with its balloons.
The appalling Los Angeles fires illustrate a climate, terrain, vegetation and governmental vulnerability a clever enemy could exploit, especially enemies like Russia and China who practice hybrid warfare.
Hybrid warfare is war waged under the veneer of "plausible deniability." Which means the bad guys attacked you but they claim you can't prove it.
On Jan. 1, New Orleans suffered a deadly terrorist attack. Revived Islamo-fascist terrorism is on the minds of many Americans.
A historically informed friend phoned me and asked me if I thought the LA fire catastrophe might be a terrorist attack. He knew in WWII the Japanese had tried to start fires in U.S. Pacific Northwest forests. When he called, a TV report claimed six fires were raging.
I told him no one, and especially government investigators, can quickly dismiss the possibility of terrorism. That said, Southern California wildfires have been occurring since the end of the Pleistocene. It's likely wildfires have been occurring since land plants evolved.
However, an incident suggested criminal or terrorist arson as a source of at least one fire. LA citizens had caught an illegal alien attempting to light fires with a blowtorch -- TV even showed the cellphone video. Most likely, the guy's a nut, I said, a pathetic character who ought to be in a mental hospital. But given the threat posed by the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua to towns in Colorado, sure, a criminal or foreign enemy actor could use characters like the blowtorch nut to destroy American property and destabilize society.
Look, I said, the likely cause is governmental incompetence. It's already apparent LA leaders cut fire department budgets and California state authorities blocked efforts to cull dead foliage by either cutting or controlled burns. (After this conversation, I heard a former California fire official later say the state government stopped commonsense fire prevention efforts.)
But my caller made a key point: The fires revealed a vulnerability that could have been mitigated. Stretches of dry weather create wildfire conditions in the American West. If you don't want Los Angeles to look like firebombed Dresden (February 1945), elect a government that makes sure the reservoirs are full, the fire hydrants work, the firefighters are trained, and the dead brush is cut and removed.
Our enemies, however, do practice sabotage. In 2024, on at least three occasions, cargo shipments from Eastern Europe caught fire in airports and warehouses in Poland, Germany and Britain. The Biden administration subsequently concluded the explosive packages were a Russian "test run" for future bomb shipments to Canada and the U.S. Media have speculated the operations' raison d'etre was to bring the war in Ukraine to North America.
That might be the fire next time.