In early September 1942, Nobuo Fujita, a 31-year-old warrant flight officer, was ordered to carry out a bombing mission over the forests of western Oregon.
In 1932, Nobuo Fujita was forcefully enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and in 1933, he began flight training. He became famous for being the only Japanese pilot to bomb the continental United States during the Second World War.
He dropped the bomb from a floatplane with the belief that he was doing a service to his nation and his emperor. As a result of the damp environment, the attack barely affected the environment and caused very little damage. He returned home to train other pilots after he didn’t get his desired effect.
Nobuo Fujita was invited to the small community he almost set ablaze in the early 1960s. The invite felt suspicious as many didn’t understand why he was being invited just twenty years after he had attempted to bomb this village in Brookings, near the California border.
Many community members signed against his coming as an honoured guest in the hometown newspaper, The Brookings-Harbor Pilot. It took a lot of discussions and convincing before the town moved forward with its invitation.
This action by the town made President John F. Kennedy congratulate the city for its effort in intentionally seeking to promote friendship and forgiveness. They went on to assure the Japanese government that Nobuo Fujita would not be arrested or treated as a war criminal.
When Nobuo Fujita came to the city, he brought along a centuries-old katana that had been entrusted to him during the war; this is the sort of sword carried by samurai warriors. It had been a family heirloom, and on the day he attempted bombing the town, the sword was in the cockpit of his plane.
Nobuo planned to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, with the sword if he met a hostile reception. He donated the sword as a goodwill gesture when the town received him warmly, with respect and affection.Â
When presenting the sword to Mayor C. Fell Campbell, he said, “This is the finest way of closing this story. The samurai tradition is to pledge peace and friendship by presenting a sword to a former enemy.” Nobuo became a community friend and visited numerous times before he died.
He planted a tree at the bomb site as a gesture of peace in 1992, and a few days before his death on Sept. 20, 1997, at a hospital in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, he was made an honorary citizen of Brookings.Â
After his death, some of his ashes were buried at the bomb site, proving that Oregon was not his former target and it had become a home to him.
