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CITY, ND – (NewsDakota.com) Author and Valley City native Ross Coen will give a presentation on his new book “Fu-Go” The Curious History of Japan’s Balloon Bomb Attack on America” Thursday, August 27 at the Barnes County Museum at 7pm.
 
During World War II, Japan launched its Fu-Go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with bombs.  The Japanese hoped these bombs would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states.

Ross Coen provides a look into the obscure history of the fu-go campaign, from the Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand to the generals in the U.S. War Department who developed defense procedures. The book delves into panic, propaganda, and media censorship in wartime. Fu-go is a compelling story of a little-known episode in our national history that unfolded virtually unseen.

Coen is a PhD student in History at the University of Washington where he studies the intersections of politics, technology, science, and environment in nineteenth and twentieth-century North American West. His dissertation focuses on a cultural and scientific history of North Pacific salmon fisheries from 1880 to 1960.

He is the author of three books, most recently Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan’s Balloon Bomb Attack on America from University of Nebraska Press (2014), and his published work has appeared in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, The Northern Review, Alaska History, Alaska Magazine, and other publications.