The morning of September 9, 1942, was foggier than usual for the time of year. Despite the conditions, fire lookout Howard Gardner still held a commanding view of the pine forest surrounding his outpost on Mount Emily in Southwest Oregon, but the fog wouldn’t be the only out of ordinary occurrence that morning…

Shortly after 6 A.M., a small single-engine monoplane interrupted the calm silence of the wilderness as it raced by. The U.S. Army Air Force patrols normally kept to the coast a few miles to the west, but this plane was heading east, deeper into the forest.

September 7, 1942—2 days earlier. Excitement was brewing aboard Imperial Japanese Navy fleet submarine I-25, under the command of Captain Meiji Tagami. Just 3 months prior, Tagami had left his mark in the history books when his submarine fired shells from her 140 mm deck gun that struck continental United States—specifically Fort Stevens, Oregon. However, rough seas and inclement weather were preventing Tagami from proceeding with his next, even more ambitious mission. I-25 bided her time and laid in wait several miles off the coast of Oregon.

One of twenty “Type B1” cruiser submarines in service at the time, she was larger than your average combat sub and housed a small hangar, as well as a catapult for an E14Y “Glen” seaplane. The plane was piloted by 31-year-old Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita. Fujita was an experienced and respected pilot in the Japanese Navy, and he was the officer who had sent the proposal up the chain of command suggesting that submarine-borne recon aircraft be used in an offensive role against the U.S. mainland. His suggestion earned him praise from Prince Takamatsu himself, and he was also granted the privilege of carrying out the first such mission, much to his delight. With the Doolittle raid on Japan still fresh in the nation’s collective memory, there was no better time to move forward with this retaliatory plan.

The target assigned to him, however, wasn’t a military base, nor was it a factory. To Fujita’s surprise and disappointment, he was to bomb a quiet forest. Though it may have sounded bizarre, there was sound logic behind the decision: a single two-man floatplane could cause minimal direct damage to military resources, but if a massive wildfire broke out and threatened population centers, huge amounts of those resources would need to be diverted away from the war effort to control the fires. Southern Oregon had experienced a dry summer, and was usually prone to forest fires well into September. Unfortunately for Captain Tagami and Fujita, while I-25 was being roughed up by waves on 7–8 September, Siskiyou National Forest—their target—was enjoying the most rainfall it had received all Summer.

In the early hours of September 9, the weather conditions were finally adequate for takeoff. Fujita’s “Glen” was pulled out of its hangar, carefully assembled on the forward deck of I-25, then secured onto the catapult device. Fujita climbed into his plane with his 400-year-old family sword, together with his observer, Petty Officer Shoji Okuda, who took up his position in the rear seat of the plane. In the dark, at 5:35 A.M, Fujita gave the thumbs-up and a rush of compressed air launched the two men and their 152 kg of incendiary ordnance into the air. So began the only aerial bombing mission of continental United States in history by an enemy aircraft.

After flying northeast for nearly 40 minutes, Fujita sighted the coastal town of Brookings, Oregon. He was on the right track. He climbed above the cloud cover and continued cruising towards his target.

Hours after spotting the plane, as the morning fog lifted, Howard Gardner was able to discern the unmistakable smoke plume of a wildfire in the distance. Assuming that it was the result of a lightning strike, he did as he had often done before: he quickly radioed in a report, packed his bag, and set off towards the source to try to contain it. After arriving at the base of the fire, Gardner managed to bring the small blaze under control, aided by the humidity of the vegetation after the previous days’ rain. What they saw once the smoke had cleared was surprising to say the least. A crater several meters in diameter, along with some metal fragments. Painted onto those shards were symbols that looked an awful lot like Japanese script.

Two and two were put together, but where had this plane come from? Such a small craft wouldn’t have had the range to fly from Japan, especially just to drop ineffective incendiary bombs in the wilderness; and surely an IJN fleet carrier would have been spotted this close to the Oregon Coast! The answer to this puzzle would be revealed the very next day.

After releasing the bombs, Fujita and Okuda observed the magnesium pellets light up spectacularly beneath the tree canopy and called it a day, heading back southwest to rendezvous with I-25. The Floatplane flew back over Brookings, touched down in the water near the submarine, and was hoisted back on board. Captain Tagami immediately set a new course north, intending to carry out a second aerial assault from a different position. On September 10, as I-25 was underway, the lookout atop the conning tower spotted a Lockheed A-29 “Hudson” bomber, on a routine patrol out of Tacoma, Washington. The submarine crew on deck scrambled to the hatch as Captain Tagami ordered an emergency crash dive. Three bombs were dropped on the submarine but caused only minimal damage to the sub’s exterior.

Tagami broke radio silence in order to send home a message of victory. This morale-boosting event was published on the front page of newspapers across Japan and Nobuo Fujita was hailed as a hero.

In 1962, twenty years after Nobuo Fujita had bombed American soil, the citizens of Brookings, Oregon, invited him as a guest of honor to take part in the annual Azalea Festival. Unsure and worried about what kind of reception he might receive, he brought his ancestral sword with him—he planned to use it on himself rather than suffer humiliation. However, upon seeing the warm reception that marked his arrival in Brookings, he gladly donated the sword to the city council as a symbol of peace and friendship between two former enemies. Shortly before his death in 1997, he was named an honorary citizen of Brookings.

Fujita’s sword can be viewed today at Brookings’ public library. A forest trail can also be hiked that leads to the original site of the bombing, where some of Fujita’s ashes lie buried.