Taste the Wind

In the last years of World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army launched 9,000 balloons bombs in a last ditch effort to attack the American mainland. Each balloon carried one high explosive bomb and a number of incendiaries. In theory, these weapons would cause forest fires on the West Coast, and, if used to carry biological agents, create panic. Traveling in the easterly jet stream many of the balloons did reach the United States and detonate as planned. Many, however, simply disappeared into the forests of the northwest, armed and dangerous.

This is the story of one missing balloon bomb that set off a terrifying forest fire near the California-Oregon border, and of three men who were inexplicably linked by time and history to the to the resulting inferno. In a moment of truth, when the fire crowned and torched the land, and survival depended on “tasting the wind,” these men did.