Eyewitness: Japanese attack on Ore.

Editor's note: Bob Larson, longtime Camp Sherman resident, died on February 12 at the age of 92. See his obituary.

On September 9, 1942 a rare Japanese pontoon plane dropped an incendiary bomb on the Siskiyou National Forest east of Brookings, Oregon. This bomb, and another dropped by the same plane, was the only direct attack to the continental United States by an enemy plane during World War II. The second bomb was never found.

The following is my account of what happened on this day.

I entered Oregon State College in 1942, enrolling in Forestry Management. At the end of the term, I was out of money and luckily obtained a job in the Chetco District of the Siskiyou National Forest. When fire season began, I was made a roving fireguard stationed on the Winchuck River.

After Pearl Harbor, some of the lookouts along the coast were on 24-hour duty. One of these was Mt. Emily, where I was sent in early September to relieve Howard Gardner's wife who needed to make a 3-4 mile trek into town for supplies. On September 9, 1942, just after daybreak, Howard woke me up to look at a plane flying south of Mt. Emily going west. It was an odd-looking plane, quite small, with pontoons. We reported it to Gold Beach Ranger Station and they relayed the information to the Roseburg Filter Center.

After breakfast, I headed down the trail because Howard's wife was on her way back to the lookout. When I got back to my vehicle, I drove to Hanscom's store in Harbor to pick up supplies. While there I received a call from District Ranger Ed Marshall. He told me to pick up a man and head for a fire on Wheeler Ridge. Freddie Flynn and I headed up Winchuck River Road to the Wheeler Creek Trail. After several miles, we ran into Howard Gardner and Keith Johnson. Keith had been sent from Bear Wallow Lookout and Howard from Mt. Emily. They said, "I bet you can't guess what started the fire?" I said, "Lightening?" They said, "No, it was a bomb."

We hiked back to the site of the fire; some black thermite pellets were still burning. The fire had not had a chance to burn too hotly due to a local rain shower that morning. Gold Beach was contacted and Ed Marshall was told the fire was started from a bomb. I met Ed the next morning at the trailhead. He and Les Colvill, Assistant Supervisor of the Siskiyou National Forest, went back to the fire site with me.

There was a small crater where the bomb imbedded, and we dug around and found the end of the bomb with the timer and Japanese inscription. The bomb had severed a small tree. Ed contacted the Army office in Gold Beach - no one had thought to contact them initially - and soldiers were sent to the area September 10.

The Japanese plane that dropped the bomb was from a submarine. A number of years after the war, the pilot of the plane made several trips to Brookings as a goodwill mission. On his last trip, he presented his samurai sword to the town of Brookings. Mr. Nobuo Fujita died at 85 years of age.

At the end of the summer of 1942, I decided not to return to college and went home to Southern California and joined the Navy. I spent three years, three months serving as a Navy gunner on merchant ships. All of my sea duty was in the South Pacific - Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines.

September 1946, I returned to Oregon State College, now Oregon State University, to continue my forestry studies, graduating in December 1948. I worked in forestry for 45 years, living first in Western Oregon and later in Central Oregon, where my wife and I lived for 28 years, primarily in Camp Sherman. I phased into real estate and out of forestry a few years after moving to Camp Sherman and retired when I was 77 years old from Sisters Realty.