4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL August 31, 2016
O PINION
Precautions, vigilance
key during fi re season
L
ast Tuesday, Aug. 23, the Oregon
Department of Forestry issued a
request for reports of suspected illegal
activities — including those that could
lead to charges of arson for purpose-
fully set fi res — in the state’s forested
lands. By the next afternoon, it became
clear to Cottage Grove residents that
such vigilance could be of vital impor-
tance each fi re season.
On Wednesday, Aug. 24, South Lane
Fire and Rescue, ODF and other agen-
cies responded to reports of a fi re on
Mt. David in Cottage Grove that was
already too close to nearby homes for
comfort, a fi re that soon threatened
the rest of the dry, grassy and wooded
hillside. The work of many, including
that of a helicopter pilot credited with
quickly squelching the fl ames, was
necessary to prevent what could’ve
been one of this community’s costliest
(and potentially deadliest) disasters.
It soon became apparent that the fi re
may have been intentionally set, and
locals here are left to wonder how such
a reckless act could happen so close to
them and their loved ones.
The following day, police arrested
three teens suspected of setting a fi re
in a Bohemia Park restroom, only to
be informed that the youths they were
looking for had already set another fi re
near Walmart in a populated area. Po-
lice say they saw little remorse from
the teens for actions that could have
been life-altering or even deadly for
many. But regret after the fact on be-
half of these youths would have mat-
tered little had these fi res not been
quickly and properly extinguished,
for it doesn't take an expert to notice
that fl ames do not discriminate, that a
fi re cares little about its cause or the
intent of the person that sets it. Which
is why it is of vital importance that Or-
egonians take grave precautions dur-
ing fi re season and keep an eye out for
those not willing to heed warnings to
that effect.
This time of year, Oregon’s fi re
agencies typically battle fi res started
by lightning or by people’s careless-
ness. But in recent weeks, ODF says
they’ve found themselves chasing
down fi re starts set by arsonists. Doz-
ens of wildfi res have broken out in re-
cent weeks across Oregon — many of
them under suspicious circumstances.
Law enforcement and wildfi re pro-
tection agencies at all levels are work-
ing hard to solve these crimes and pre-
vent future arsons. Vigilance is high
among Oregon State Police troopers,
county sheriff’s deputies and state and
federal forestry agencies’ fi eld person-
nel. Oregon’s forests are expansive
— 30 million acres — and they could
use the public’s help to put a stop to
this rash of deliberately set fi res.
Thousands of recreationists enjoy-
ing the forests this summer can serve
as eyes and ears to report suspected
illegal activity in the woods. Call the
Oregon State Police Tip Line, 503-
375-3555, to confi dentially report tips.
And by all means, be cautious this fi re
season, and encourage others to do so
as well.
Offbeat Oregon History
Japan’s balloon bombs could have done
a lot more damage
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
O
n July 9, 1945, residents of
northwest Oregon started seeing
heavy smoke rising into the air over the
Coast Range.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight. Twelve
years earlier, in 1933, the granddaddy
of all Oregon forest fi res had broken
out in the same general region, and by
the time it was snuffed out by early fall
rains, it had turned 350,000 acres of
prime virgin forest into a moonscape.
Six years after that, it had happened
again.
And now, like a six-year jinx coming
on schedule to haunt the state, the for-
est was on fi re again. It would happen
again six years further on, in 1951.
But there was one particularly inter-
esting thing about the 1945 burn: No-
body knew how it got started. Both the
earlier burns had been started by log-
ging operations; this one, though, had
just fl ared up, and when it was all over
and done it was traced back to an almost
inaccessible spot near the Salmonberry
River – nowhere near any roads or log-
ging operations.
No one will ever know for sure. But
the best explanation for the outbreak of
the third Tillamook Burn, fi ve months
before the end of the Second World
War, is by far the most dramatic one:
Enemy action, in reprisal for the
Doolittle Raids on Tokyo three years
earlier.
Historian Robert Mikesh makes a
solid case that the Doolittle Raids,
launched in 1942 by the Pendleton-
based 17th Bomb Group, shortened the
war considerably by putting the Japa-
nese military command into an intoler-
able psychological position. The scant
physical damage done by the handful
of B-25s was nothing compared with
the damage they did to Imperial Japan’s
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Just fi ne
I’ve been in this country almost 90 years
But its condition brings me a lot of tears.
I don’t want it to be in this condition any more.
It was a whole lot better the way it was before.
You would think he could make a better place to live.
But he just can’t fi nd a better solution to fi nd or give.
So many of our nations’ people still live in poverty
even tho he promised from debt, he would set them free.
In my life time I’ve never seen everything so bad,
pride, and after the raid the military
was almost desperate to recover its lost
“face.” Among other things, this led to
the Japanese steaming out in force to
meet the American Navy at Midway
– in a battle that looked a lot more even
than it turned out to be, because of how
much more punishment the U.S. could
take.
It also led to a fl ood of innovation
from the Japanese, brainstorming up
ways to put some kind of hurt on the
American homeland like the Yanks had
done to them. One gambit, tried once
in 1942 without much success, was the
fi rebombing of the forest near Brook-
ings by a submarine-launched sea-
plane.
But probably the most interesting
innovation to be inspired by the Doo-
little raid was the world’s fi rst inter-
continental weapon system – a system
based on a modernization of a technol-
ogy from the 1700s: Hydrogen-fi lled
balloons. They became known as “fi re
balloons.”
The Japanese had discovered that
the jet stream runs from Japan straight
across the Pacifi c Ocean to North Amer-
ica all winter long at speeds of over 100
miles an hour. At speeds like that, they
realized, a balloon launched from Ja-
pan would reach the U.S. in about three
Our nation is looking at the worst condition it’s ever had.
The country’s poor people believed all of Mr. Obama’s lies,
Then we found out he had so many big money ties.
Many poor people continue to eat out of garbage cans today,
Or any other food that has already been thrown away.
Be careful that you don’t elect another one just like Mr.
Obama next time,
or one more that’s convinced that all the hungry and home-
less are just fi ne.
Glen Bricker
Cottage Grove
days. So they got busy fi guring out how
to take advantage of that.
There were serious engineering
problems, though, involved with over-
night balloon fl ights. The sun would
warm the gas during the day, increas-
ing the lift; and it would then cool off
at night. If left to its own devices, a bal-
loon would simply sink into the ocean
after sunset.
To deal with this, the Japanese engi-
neers rigged the balloons with an inge-
nious clockwork mechanism rigged to
an altimeter. When the balloon dipped
below 30,000 feet or so, the mechanism
would release one or two bags of bal-
last, sending the balloon back up into
the right altitude range again. When the
morning came and the expanding gas
threatened to raise the balloon out of the
jet stream, the clockwork would open a
gas valve, venting some of the helium
gas to keep it at the proper height.
Each balloon was rigged with enough
ballast to go through two day-night
cycles. On the third day, engineers cal-
culated it would be over the continent,
and the clockwork bomb-control device
would drop its payload of incendiary or
antipersonnel bombs, after which the
balloon itself would self-destruct.
The Japanese fi nally got these weap-
ons worked out to their satisfaction in
the fall of 1944. On the island of Hon-
shu, nestled among protecting hills, a
team of schoolgirls worked to build the
balloons out of tough, light mulberry
paper; they were rigged with the clock-
work, ballast and bombs and launched
into the sky, one by one, for all that
winter. A total of roughly 9,000 of them
rose into the sky over Japan and started
out across the Pacifi c Ocean. It was the
longest-ranged attack in military his-
tory, a record that would stand until
1982 when the British broke it during
the Falkland Islands war.
A few days later, odd things started
happening in the American and Cana-
dian West. A father and son on a fi sh-
ing trip one morning on a north-woods
lake saw a balloon drift by and disap-
pear over a nearby hill – and then a big
explosion echoed through the woods.
Two farmers working in a fi eld were
startled by another big explosion. A
mother was tucking her child in for the
night when the tyke’s bedroom was lit
up by the fl ash of a big explosion near
the window.
In all these incidents, all that re-
mained of whatever it had been were
metal fragments, blast craters and
sometimes bits of mulberry paper.
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A
Soda and junk food affect children’s behavior and school performance
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
T
he standard American
diet, chock full of soda
and other sugary drinks, fast
foods and other low-nutrient
foods, can have a major impact
on the health and lives of our
children. Rising rates of child-
hood obesity driven by this way
of eating have received much
attention; however, low-nutrient
foods are still having negative
effects on the physical and men-
tal health of children who are not
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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overweight.
Children
are not im-
mune to the
damaging
health ef-
fects of the
standard
American
diet, which
can set them up for a lifetime of
poor health, ranging from heart
disease to behavior problems
and lower cognitive perfor-
mance.
On average, U.S. children and
teens consume over 200 calories
a day from soda and other sug-
ary drinks, and it is estimated
that about 14 percent of their
calories come from fast food.
As a result of the poor diets of
American children, more than
one-third of normal-weight
teenagers (and about half of
overweight teenagers) have at
least one diet-related risk fac-
tor for heart disease. These di-
etary patterns have the potential
to dramatically affect not only
public health but the productiv-
ity of our future adult popula-
tion; studies have implicated
poor diet in limiting intelligence
and academic performance and
also drawn parallels between
consumption of sweets during
childhood and violence in adult-
hood.
A study on soda consumption
found an increase in behavior
and attention problems in fi ve-
year-old children (as assessed by
their mothers) with increasing
daily consumption of soda. For-
ty-three percent of the fi ve-year-
olds in the study drank soda at
least once a day. The authors ad-
justed their results for potential
confounding factors that might
affect behavior, such as hours of
television and a stressful home
environment, and still found a
signifi cant association between
soda consumption and aggres-
sion, withdrawn behavior and
poor attention. They proposed
that caffeine and/or fl uctuations
in blood sugar might be respon-
sible for the association between
soda and behavior problems.
Blood glucose levels do affect
the workings of the brain, and
habitual high sugar intake has
been shown to impair cognitive
function. Several previous stud-
ies on high school students have
also associated soda consump-
tion with aggressive behavior,
as well as depression and self-
harm. Plus, higher sugar sweet-
ened beverage consumption is
linked to diabetes, cardiovascu-
lar disease and cancers.
In addition to soda, higher fast
food consumption in fi fth grade
(four or more times per week)
has been associated with poor-
er academic progress in math,
reading and science between
fi fth grade and eighth grade.
Children who ate fast food one
to three times per week—a com-
mon level of intake—compared
to those who ate no fast food
had lower scores in math. These
results suggest that children eat-
ing fast food frequently could
slow their academic progress.
The food habits children de-
velop in their early years have
a substantial impact on their
physical health and mental
well-being throughout the rest
of our lives. Parents need to
know this information, so that
they can help their children to
live healthfully, maintain a posi-
tive mindset and reach their full
cognitive potential.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New
York Times best-selling author
and a board certifi ed family
physician specializing in life-
style and nutritional medicine.
Visit his informative website at
DrFuhrman.com.
(USP 133880)
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