THE WEST
SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A5
Firefighters save monument to
people killed by World War II bomb
■ Bootleg fire threatened the monument at the site where a Japanese balloon
bomb exploded on May 5, 1945, killing five children and a pregnant woman
Wes Morgan/Contributed Photo
By Douglas Perry
The Oregonian/OregonLive
Deep in the woods outside
Bly stands a stone monu-
ment to a unique and terrible
moment in U.S. history — a
Japanese bomb attack during
World War II that killed fi ve
Oregon children and a preg-
nant young woman.
Firefi ghters this week
saved that monument from
the Bootleg Fire.
The blaze that’s raging
across more than 400,000
acres, started by lightning
strikes, is what the Japanese
military hoped to accomplish
76 years ago when it strapped
crude bombs to balloons
and released them into the
jet stream over the Pacifi c
Ocean.
On May 5, 1945 — with
the end of the war in Europe
looming, portending more Al-
lied resources being directed
to the Pacifi c Theater — the
Rev. Archie Mitchell and his
pregnant wife, Elsie, took fi ve
children from his Sunday-
school class on a picnic in
what is now part of the
Fremont-Winema National
Forest. One of the children
noticed a large, shiny object
resting in a snowbank and
approached it. The object was
a Japanese balloon bomb.
Archie Mitchell was pulling
lunch out of the car when the
explosion happened.
“I ran up there,” the
27-year-old pastor later said.
“And they were all dead.”
Mitchell’s wife and the chil-
dren would be World War II’s
only U.S. mainland casualties
Fremont-Winema National Forest/Contributed Photo
The Mitchell Monument features the names of the
people killed by a Japanese balloon bomb on May 5,
1945, near Bly, in Klamath County.
from enemy action. The war
ended three months later
with Japan’s unconditional
surrender.
In 1950, Oregon Gov.
Douglas McKay dedicated
the Mitchell Monument.
The stone tower features a
bronze plaque that memori-
alizes the victims:
• Edward Engen, 13
• Jay Gifford, 13
• Elsie Mitchell, 26
• Dick Patzke, 14
• Joan Patzke, 13
• Sherman Shoemaker, 11
The U.S. Forest Service
calls the monument “the piv-
otal attraction of the Mitchell
Recreation Area.”
The stone memorial is sur-
rounded by picnic tables and
fi re grills. There’s also the
“Shrapnel Tree,” a Ponderosa
pine that bears scars from
the long-ago bomb explosion
and in 2005 was designated
an Oregon Heritage Tree.
Elsie Mitchell’s parents at-
tended the monument’s 1950
dedication, but their son-in-
law wasn’t able to do so. He
was in Vietnam spreading
the gospel. In 1962, he and
two other Christian mission-
aries were kidnapped by the
Viet Cong and disappeared.
It’s not known what be-
came of them.
At the end of last week,
seeing where the Bootleg
Fire likely was headed,
crews headed to the Mitchell
Monument to create “defen-
sible space” in and around
it, fi refi ghting operations
spokeswoman Sarah Gracey
told The Oregonian.
This included cutting tree
limbs back to the trunks
and raking the area to take
away potential fuel for the
fi re. The team also wrapped
the Shrapnel Tree and the
monument’s signs and picnic
tables in a material that is
similar to what they use for
fi re shelters. Finally, planes
dropped retardant on the
area.
And it worked.
The Bootleg Fire recently
passed through the area —
and the Mitchell Monument
survived.
“It’s one of the successes so
far,” Gracey said — with more
soon to come, she believes.
“We feel like we have a
huge challenge,” she said,
“but we’re hoping to make
progress and turn a corner.”
Two men were injured early Friday, July 23, when
their car crashed into a ponderosa pine tree beside
Highway 7 near Sumpter. The impact started a fi re
that engulfed the car and spread to a small section
of forest nearby.
CRASH
Continued from Page A1
Morgan said the crash
was reported at 3:51 a.m.
The site was near
Milepost 28, about 21
miles west of Baker City
and about three miles east
of the Sumpter junction.
Morgan said the crash
happened just east of
where Huckleberry Loop
meets Highway 7.
Morgan, who lives about
two and a half miles from
the crash site, said the car
was engulfed in fl ames
when he arrived, but both
the driver and passenger
had gotten out.
He said he used the
hose from his truck, which
carries 100 gallons of
water, to knock down the
fi re, and tended to the two
men.
Morgan said the
driver appeared to have
sustained more severe
injuries.
He said other volunteers
from his department, the
Powder River Rural Fire
Protection District, arrived
to fi ght the fi re, while vol-
unteers from the Sumpter
Fire Department prepared
a helicopter landing spot
along Hudspeth Lane,
about two miles to the
FIRE
Continued from Page A2
While the Holiday Farm Fire was
impacted heavily by wind, it’s been
the terrain, he said, that has been
diffi cult at Elbow Creek.
“Every fi re is different just based
on the environment and weather
conditions,” he said. “You look at
Holiday Farm last year, it was wind-
driven, a very signifi cant wind event,
which is challenging in itself because
of the rate of spread, but you knew
where it was going. The wind’s blow-
ing from one direction and pushing
on the fi re. Here, what’s challenging
about it is it’s fuel-driven and (you
face) smoke, and drainages. You don’t
know which way the wind is going to
blow up these drainages.”
He said that the deep, steep drain-
ages and canyons in the area where
the fi re is burning makes trying to
attack it diffi cult.
“The Holiday Farm Fire, you
could reach everywhere,” he said.
“These canyons are so deep, it’s really
challenging to get people down into
them.”
The canyons’ depth and steepness
have even limited one of the tactics
Smith likes to employ — fi ghting fi re
at night.
“It’s a really good time to catch a
fi re, but it’s too steep and too danger-
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
A bulldozer navigates Sloan Point Road on Thursday, July 22, 2021 while working the Elbow Creek Fire
near Promise.
ous to put fi refi ghters in a draw at
night time here, so that takes away
one of our typical strategies simply
because of geography,” he said.
In explaining fi refi ghting and
tactics, he said there is a benefi t to
having air support, but manpower
on the ground is what matters.
“People like to think ‘just bring
in more helicopters or air tankers.’
They slow the fi re, (but) you have to
have boots on the ground to really
put it out,” he said. “Even if it rains, it
buys you an opportunity. I like to tell
people we take advantage of oppor-
tunities. If we can get an air tanker
in there and slow it down, maybe we
can chip away at a line. It’s all about
containment, and in this country it’s
hard to contain a fi re.”
A contained portion of a fi re, he
east, for a LifeFlight
helicopter.
That helicopter picked
up the driver and fl ew
him to a Boise hospital,
Morgan said.
A Baker City Fire
Department ambulance
brought the passenger to
Saint Alphonsus Medical
Center-Baker City, where
a second helicopter took
him to Boise, Morgan said.
“Volunteers from Pow-
der River and Sumpter are
fantastic,” Morgan said.
He said the fi re didn’t
spread far from the car,
in part because there was
some green grass near the
base of the ponderosa pine.
Morgan said it was
“brisk” in the predawn —
a weather station near the
Sumpter junction recorded
a low temperature of 37
degrees Friday.
Steve Meyer, wildland
fi re supervisor at the Or-
egon Department of For-
estry’s Baker City offi ce,
said an ODF crew checked
the fi re later Friday morn-
ing to make sure it’s out.
Meyer said the fi re
likely would have spread
much faster had the crash
happened during the
afternoon, given recent
temperatures in the 80s
and gusty winds.
said, is where a border containment
line is holding to the point the crew
feels confi dent they could leave
that portion and it would no longer
spread.
“We’re estimating if we walked
away from it, we’re estimating 15%
of that line we have in, it wouldn’t
expand,” he said when explaining
the containment at the time, which
was 15%. “The rest of the fi re could.
“As we continue to strengthen those
lines, the containment goes up.
Before we leave here it will be at
100%.”
The terrain, he said, dictates what
strategy is put in place, but he added
the team will “chisel away” putting
a border around the fi re until it’s
handled.
“What’s your fi rst priority? Maybe
it’s a little section of line, but you
have to button that up. We have
people throughout the fi re, we’ll re-
ally put an emphasis on one of those
fronts, catch that one, and (then)
we’ll put emphasis on another one,
and just chisel away at it.”
The blaze Smith worked on last
year was the largest he had ever
been on, yet he’s stunned by the cur-
rent fi re situation.
“It’s crazy the size of fi res right
now. Never seen anything like it,” he
said. “It’s more fi res, and they’re all
big fi res.”