🤯💥Mind Blown! Despite this being a historical fiction, I didn’t realize Alma Katsu starts off in the first chapter with real people. Rev. Archie E. Mitchell really does witness his family blown up by a Japanese balloon bomb. They are the only fatalities of World War II in the continental U.S.
On May 5, 1945, while picnicking in the woods, Mitchell’s wife and some children from their congregation unknowingly detonated a Japanese balloon bomb they found, also known as a Fu-Go balloon bomb. The tragic explosion resulted in the deaths of Elsie Mitchell, 26, who was married to minister Archie E. Mitchell, as well as four teenagers and a preteen: Edward Engen, 13; Richard Patzke, 14; Jay Gifford, 13; Sherman Shoemaker, 11; and Joan Patzke, 13. Upon hearing the explosion, Reverend Mitchell rushed to the scene and found the lifeless bodies.
The first chapter starts off in Bly, Oregon with Archie Mitchell driving down Dairy Creek Road. Bly is an unincorporated small town in Klamath County, by highway, it is about 50 miles (80 km) east of Klamath Falls. As of 2020, the population was 207. Gearhart Mountain Wilderness, also in the first chapter, is about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bly. I couldn’t find any mention of Dairy Creek Road in Bly but I did find a Dairy Creek Lane, pictured above.
You can visit the memorial erected at what today is called the Mitchell Recreation Area, pictured below. I really want to visit Bly, Oregon now. Road trip anyone?
If you can’t get the time off work to visit Bly, then just visit the Unquiet Book Club where we are reading together as a group.
Oregon State Archives
What a horrible waste of lives — people that had nothing to do with that old war, and were simply out for a picnic in the wilds. I wonder how come that balloon came to be there. Blown clear to Oregon on the whim of the wind?