July 30, 2006

 

 

A Ballooning Threat

 

   During World War Two, the U.S. government didn’t want to inflate public fears, so it never said a word about balloon bombs sent across the Pacific by the Japanese:  until May 5, 1945.

   On that warm, clear day, Pastor Archie Mitchell went for a picnic on Gearhart Mountain near Bly, Oregon with his wife, Elsie, and five children from their Sunday School.  While he parked the car, the others came across one of the Japanese balloons on the mountainside.  One of them touched the device and it exploded, killing all six.  They became the only casualties on the U.S. mainland from enemy attack. 

   Weighing public safety against fears that news of the balloons would panic people or encourage the enemy to send more, officials quickly abandoned their well-intentioned secrecy.  Soon everyone knew about the Japanese Fugo balloons.  

   Measuring 33 feet across and 70 feet long, the contraptions carried five bombs borne aloft by balloons made of a tough paper made from mulberry trees and glued together with potato paste.  They relied on hydrogen gas and the Pacific’s prevailing eastern winds to reach North America where the Japanese hoped the balloons would instil fear and start forest fires.  

   Between October 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched 9,300 but it’s estimated fewer than 500 made it across the ocean.   Only 90 were ever recovered in the U.S. and Canada, including one that landed in Medford, Oregon without exploding, and another found by a Nevada rancher who used the balloon as a tarp to cover his hay, unaware two bombs were still attached.   On March 10, 1945 one of the last balloons landed on some electrical lines in Washington State.  The bombs didn’t explode but the power interruption shut down the Hanford Nuclear Reactor for three days.  Ironically, that reactor was producing plutonium for an atomic bomb — the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan five months later.

   All of this should remind us that so many sins and situations we encounter may look harmless on the surface, but they have the heart-wrenching capacity to blow up in our faces.  Usually though, that’s the furthest thing on our minds when we’re intrigued and enticed.  

   Even when our consciences send out warning signs, we often override them. “Just looking,” we say to ourselves.  And like the fruit in the Garden, it looks good. So we approach the forbidden out of curiosity, often driven by a niggling, then nagging sense that we’re missing out.  Or we convince ourselves we can dabble and walk away at any time.  Whether out of pride or genuine unawareness, we get way too close and touch off an explosion that obliterates our integrity and good intentions.  That’s why it’s vital to see sin for what it is and recognise its very real dangers.

   But that becomes harder when parents or church leaders refuse to talk openly about tough issues like addictions and sexuality, fearing the impressionable will become even more curious.  When we hide behind secrecy — instead of telling the hard truths and teaching how to make good, godly decisions — innocent people get hurt.

   In Psalm 1:1,2, David talks about those wise enough to stay away from dangerous, destructive behaviour. “Oh the joys of those who don’t follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with them, or join in with them... But they delight in doing everything the Lord wants;  day and night they think about his ways.” Notice the progression of the vulnerable:  from listening up, to hanging out, to joining in.  

   The alternative is to keep our thoughts centred on God’s will and what we know to be right;  to walk away, and walk in the Way.  After all, the moral bombs we encounter may temporarily interrupt the flow of God’s power into our lives.  But they can’t sabotage the final victory achieved by his ultimate weapon — the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.  Measured against that, the threats of the enemy become little more than hot air.   

 

By Rick Gamble.  Published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe to this free weekly article, send a note to Rick at sgamble@bfree.on.ca