Japanese attack on U.S. mainland

Factual Questions
1

I watched 1941 last night. I started watching the “making of” bonus track and one of the writers related this story:

The Japanese planned to shell the coast of California with 12 of their submarines to deliver a psychological blow to the U.S. Our anti-submarine patrols thwarted this attack, but one submarine lobbed a few rounds at Southern California.

The writer said that well before the war, the captain of a Japanese oil tanker made frequent trips to the Richfield refinery in Santa Barbara. As was the custom at the time, he was treated as a visiting dignitary. While taking a tour of the facilities, he slipped and planted his backside on a cactus. Some Richfield employees laughed at him, causing him to “lose face”.

It’s said that this tanker captain became a submariner, and it was he who was the skipper of the submarine that fired on the coast in February 1942. Rather than blast the refinery, which would have been a strategic blow, he aimed his shots at the patch of ground where the cactus grew. Thus he fired on the U.S. mainland, and also left a “calling card” for anyone who remembered his embarassing incident. Sort of, “This is who I am, and I have attacked your country.”

I’ve heard before that a sub shot a few rounds at the California coast, but I’d never heard this story before. The way the writer phrased it (and he did do several weeks of research while he and his partner were writing the film) it sounded like he believed it could have happened that way, but that he didn’t have absolute documentation that it did. (After all, how would anyone know the name of the captain of that submarine? I suppose the skipper could have survived the war and could have related it himself…)

Has anyone else heard this?

2

The name of the Captain and the number of the sub from one of those on this date blurbs

“1942 - In the first bombing raid against the continental United States in World War II, the Japanese submarine I-17, commanded by Captain Kozo Nishino, fires approximately thirteen shells against the Barnsdall Oil Refinery in Ellwood, California.”

3

More info on I-17 and it’s shelling of ships and mainland
It deals mostly with the freighter Samoa and the tanker Emidio though. It does deal with the submarines assigned to the California coast during this time.

4

I recall hearing that the Japanese also launched incendiary bomb laden balloons towards the West coast. Their intent was to set the Pacific coast forests ablaze. Most of the bombs were duds, although one did ignite a small fire in Oregon. Anyone got a cite for this?

5

The History Channel shows a documentary on this frequently.

6

Zenster: the Japanese FUGO incendiary balloons were launched from the home islands (the IJN launched a few rubber weather balloons from subs) in the winter of 1944-45, in a bid to cause headaches to the US and Canadian war effort by destroying large stands of timber.

I’ve written about these before on the boards, but I can’t get the search to turn up any of those posts.

It would be comic opera but for the fact that six people–a pregnant woman and five children–were killed on Gearhart Mountain, OR on May 5, 1945. The balloons had a 10 kg antipersonnel bomb attached (most likely as a destruct device), and it is likely this which killed the unfortunate picnickers.

Here’s an excellent summary of the FUGO program. A longer, more detailed page, here adds that a FUGO shorted power at the Hanford nuclear plant, briefly shutting down plutonium production (for the Nagasaki A-bomb).
This page has a good photo and drawing of the “Type A” balloon.

Interestingly, an all-black army parachute battalion of smokejumpers was created to deal with any forest fires resulting from Japanese incendiaries.

Fighter squadrons in the US and Canada were regularly scrambled to shoot down FUGOs.

Over 9000 were launched, and it is estimated that over 1000 may have reached North America, at least one as far east as Michigan! Some 300 have been found, and there are undoubtedly many more, mostly in the woods and mountains of the pacific coast.

I have a small fragment of the bluish-green mulberry paper that formed the envelope, recovered from a crash site in British Columbia in 1945. I have just recently located the main ring assembly, battery box with plugs and (deactivated) 10 kg bomb from a FUGO at an eastern Canadian museum, and they have agreed to put it on long term loan to my military museum. Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site. I hope to have it on display here by the mid-summer of 2001.

There was a remarkable instance of a Japanese Navy aircraft bombing Oregon forests with incendiary bombs. Flying Officer Fujita, in a single-engined GLEN seaplane based on the submarine I-15, carried out his attack in September of 1942. I-25 also torpedoed or shelled a number of merchant ships in Canadian and US waters, as well as (accidentally) sinking a Soviet sub. Her sister sub, I-26, shelled a lighthouse on Vancouver Island, British Columbia in June of 1942.

Bert Webber’s book Silent Siege has details and photos on all this and more.

7

Interesting date, considering this thread: May 5, 1945 - we shall remember.

8

For those of you that don’t know about the U.S.'s strange incindiary weapon of WWII, check out the book “Bat Bomb : World War II’s Other Secret Weapon”
by Jack Couffer.

9

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country …
German sabateurs came ashore from a U-boat in Ponte Vedra, Florida, in 1942. Golf fans know where this is, the Tournement Players Championship is here, but for people with a life, it is on the Atlantic coast, just south of Jacksonville, and north of St. Augustine (NE corner of state). Go to this link, the newspaper article has several separate stories about “infamous” folk, but if you scroll far enough, you’ll find what I’m talking about.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/122799/met_1634855.html