What Next, Please?

Some time early last month a balloon floated silently in across Cape Flattery on Washington's rainswept northern coast. The balloon, made of shellacked, parchment-like paper and bearing the rising sun of Japan, was a sizable object (33 1/2 ft. in diameter) but nobody saw it, apparently. Eventually a 70-ft. fuse, connected to a small incendiary bomb on the inflammable paper bag, sputtered--and went out. The balloon drifted on across the Northwest.

Finally, unseen, unheard, it buckled gently into a heap near Kalispell, Mont., 475 air miles east of the Pacific. Last week, after its discovery by two puzzled loggers, men of the FBI and the Army Air Forces went over it trying to figure out where it came from, and why.

Quaint as it appeared, the balloon was a practical and efficient affair. Inflated with hydrogen, it was capable of lifting 800 lbs. The FBI discovered that the Japanese had obligingly printed a good deal of information on the bag. It had been completed only a few weeks before, on Oct. 31, at a Japanese factory. Japanese characters also revealed the number of hours spent in its manufacture, data regarding work shifts.

Like the small seaplane which dropped an incendiary bomb and started a forest fire in Oregon during 1942, the balloon had presumably been launched from an offshore submarine. But why? If it had carried men, where had they parachuted to earth? Since the balloon was designed to destroy itself in the air, had other earlier balloons sailed in across the Northwest undetected?

The FBI and the Air Forces, which sent a balloon expert, Major J. F. Bolgiano, west to Montana, were not alone in their speculation. Residents of Kalispell, who kept mum until week's end at the Government's request, were engaged in fascinated discussion about what odd people the Japanese are.

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