風船と偽札が過去に登戸にあった

先週のJapan Times日曜版は風船爆弾をとりあげていました。70周年ということもあり、8月は戦争関連の話題が増えるかもしれません。

Winds of war: Japan’s balloon bombs took the Pacific battle to American soil
BY TIM HORNYAK
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
JUL 25, 2015

Words checked = [2120]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [80%]

風船爆弾の存在はあまり知られていないのは、日本国内でも機密作戦だったことと、米国でも報道規制をかけていたことが原因としてあるそうです。

Japan’s balloon bombs remain little known 70 years after the end of World War II for several reasons. They were developed in strict secrecy by the Japanese military as its naval fleet suffered a crushing blow in 1944 and could no longer strike the United States. The U.S. government also censored virtually all news reports of balloons striking its territory, threatening to charge those who did disseminate such news with aiding the enemy. The War Department destroyed much of the evidence of the bombs. Finally, the bombs did very little damage compared to the scale of the conflict.

およそ２０００語の長い記事で風船爆弾のことをまとめてくれていますが、この兵器は現在の明治大学生田キャンパスのある登戸研究所で開発されました。

But the explosive balloons were remarkable feats of engineering with a distinctly Japanese touch. Their development was centered at the Imperial Japanese Army Noborito Laboratory, located in the hills of Kawasaki southwest of Tokyo on land in Kanagawa Prefecture that now belongs to Meiji University. Known for its links to the military Unit 731, which experimented on human subjects in Harbin, the lab was charged with developing secret weapons and techniques to undermine enemy states, such as the production of counterfeit currency distributed in China. In response to the April 1942 “Doolittle Raid” on Tokyo — the first U.S. attack on Honshu — Japan wanted to hit back by any means possible. The army considered initial plans to load high-flying balloons with the rinderpest virus, but this was ultimately abandoned for fear of a terrible retaliation by the U.S. — which came anyway in the form of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



風船爆弾はオレゴンで6人の死者を出しただけでなく、発射時の事故で6人の日本人もなくしたようです。オレゴン州の現場では今では記念碑が建っているようで、本当にYoutubeは便利です。

The Americans from Bly weren’t the only ones killed by the balloons. Six Japanese also died in an accident when releasing them, according to Akira Yamada, curator of the defunct Imperial Japanese Army Noborito Laboratory Museum for Education in Peace. The museum is housed in an original wartime laboratory building and has a small-scale replica of a balloon bomb as well as exhibits about how the washi paper was fabricated.
“The attacks by balloon bombs were adopted as a last-ditch measure,” says Yamada. “Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier units didn’t have enough fuel to attack the American mainland, and the military didn’t have any long-range bombers that could do the job.”

Japan Timesの記事でも登場した明治大学平和教育登戸研究所資料館。2010年開館時に記事にもしていました。

Balloon bombs, poisons all in a day’s work at Noborito
BY MARK SCHREIBER
OCT 17, 2010

Japan Timesの日曜版を見て、生田まで行って資料館を見てきましたが、無料ながら、３０ページもある資料冊子ももらえて、展示はしっかりしていて、DVDによる説明もあり、とても充実したものでオススメです。映画でやっていたドイツ軍に偽札造り。日本も中国に向けて実行していたなんて、この資料館のおかげで初めて知りました。。。