"Balloon bombs aimed at North America were released by the thousands," says Meiji University professor Akira Yamada, running his hand in an up-and-down motion across a diagram of the Pacific Ocean. He first points to the spots on the coast of Honshu from where these explosive devices were launched, and then traces their eastward flight with a rightward sweep of his arm.
We're in Room 2, one of five exhibit rooms at the Noborito Institute for Peace Education in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, a museum that opened to the public on April 7, and Yamada, who also acts as curator, is giving me a guided tour.
While the damage wreaked by these fusen bakudan (balloon bombs) on the enemy was negligible compared to the B-29 raids over Japan, they were, perhaps, the best-known product of this once-secret army laboratory tucked away on a low plateau across the Tama River from Tokyo. Five years after the war's end, the land and its buildings, in Tama Ward, Kawasaki, became the Ikuta Campus of Meiji University.