Very near here on a warm spring day in 1945, six people—a woman and five children—were killed by a Japanese "balloon bomb" or Fugo after arriving for a picnic and discovering the deflated balloon; while they were gathered around the strange device, it exploded. Within a few weeks, word spread through the community that this bomb was no fluke; there had been others, and there could be more. Despite the intensity of the attack and the success of the devices themselves, nearly 10,000 were launched and at least 300 made it across the Pacific, but the mission was ultimately a failure. Few bombs did any real damage; most detonated over remote areas in the wettest time of the year. Launched from 6,000 miles away in Japan and deployed in retaliation for US bombing raids on Japanese soil, Fugo were the world's first intercontinental weapons, intended by the Japanese military to create terror and panic as squadrons of these silent killers wafted in from the ocean.