Loadmasters from the 555th heave heavy smokejumping gear into a C-47 in Pendleton, Oregon.

“We had no idea what smokejumpers were,” Morris said. “It was a letdown, really, because we thought we were going to fight the enemy.”

The paratroopers soon learned that smokejumpers are firefighters who parachute down into fires in remote areas. It is an effective way to reach forest fires — much faster than on foot or on mules — and was a fairly new practice. The Forest Service had been doing it only since 1939.

The Triple Nickles received their orders in Pendleton, and some would argue that they were about to fight the enemy — just not where or how they had ever imagined. It wasn’t merely a heavy lightning season or careless campers that caused the Forest Service to need extra men that spring. It was the Japanese.

More than three years earlier, on December 7, 1941, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japan’s goal had been to destroy the American naval ships stationed there, thus preventing the U.S. from interfering in the war. The Pearl Harbor attack had sunk four battleships, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed more than 2,400 Americans. But the Japanese plan backfired. Instead of keeping America out of the war, Pearl Harbor triggered the moment America entered World War II. It also marked the beginning of a growing fear and hatred between the United States and Japan that would take decades to heal.

Yuzuru “John” Takeshita was born in America. He lived in California and was just fifteen years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Yet suddenly his own neighbors considered him a threat.

“My teacher asked us [Japanese Americans] who were Boy Scouts to turn in our knives and compasses and flashlights. . . . I suppose she feared that we might use them for sabotage . . . that we might be waiting for the right moment.” He said this with a nervous laugh. “It was a very scary, uncertain time.”

Takeshita was just one of thousands of Japanese Americans who, overnight, were seen as the enemy in their own country. People lost their businesses and were fired from their jobs. One young man had done yard work for a neighbor who had always been friendly, but when he showed up after Pearl Harbor, she told him to go home. During the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese-American soldier who happened to be out of uniform was almost killed by a fellow American soldier who assumed he was the enemy. Two high-school football players in California were harassed by their teammates, and when they stuck up for themselves, the principal kicked them out of school. Most Japanese Americans didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. They had never even heard of it.

Just the same, as Tom Kawagushi recalled, “I had the strangest feeling that all the eyes were on me.” He and his brother decided “there’s only one thing we can do — enlist. After all, you and I are Americans.” But when they went to the recruiting office, “they threw us out. They said, ‘We don’t want any Japs around here.’ And I cried.” Sumi Seki’s memory of the time perfectly captured what was going on: “We had the face of the enemy.”

With a nation now fearing this enemy, panic won and the unthinkable happened. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in more than 120,000 “people of Japanese ancestry” being rounded up and put in internment camps. Over half of them were children. People lost their homes, their businesses. Families were split up. It made no difference whether they were born and raised in America. They looked Japanese. They looked like the enemy. And so they were treated as the enemy — even though that treatment violated their rights as American citizens.

April 5, 1942. People of Japanese ancestry arrive at the Santa Anita Assembly Center from San Pedro, California. From there, they were moved to relocation centers.

Japanese Americans and African Americans had more in common during the war than they might have known. At a time when their nation treated both minorities badly, for many, their patriotism moved them to rise above it. Remarkably, from within the barracks of the internment camps, many Japanese Americans volunteered for the military and were accepted (unlike Kawagushi). One soldier, who served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team — an all-Japanese-American unit that earned the most medals of any World War II unit — had this to say: “We had a mission and that mission was to show them that we can fight and die just as well as any other American.” Another said, “A lot of us felt that this was our only chance to demonstrate our loyalty. We would never get a second chance. This was it.”

Famous photographer Ansel Adams shot this street scene at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California, showing rows of internment camp houses. People lost their homes and businesses and were forced to live here.

This passion to prove their loyalty and worth was something the Triple Nickles felt in their bones. So despite the twinge of disappointment they felt, they accepted their secret mission in Pendleton with dedication and commitment. They weren’t being sent overseas to fight the war, but they were being sent to fight a threat by the Japanese on American soil. Code name: Operation Firefly.

The very same day the Triple Nickles had boarded their train to Pendleton, a tragedy was unfolding near their destination. It was a sunny spring morning in Bly, Oregon, on May 5, 1945. A young pastor and his wife, Archie and Elsye Mitchell, were getting ready to take a group of five young teenage Sunday-school students for an afternoon of fishing and picnicking. Elsye baked a chocolate cake to take along with their lunch, and Archie gathered the fishing gear. Once the car was packed, the Mitchells and their five passengers headed for Leonard Creek.

As they neared the fishing spot, they saw a truck stuck in the mud. The men from the truck told Archie that the road was not passable, so they should park nearby and hike the rest of the way to the creek. Elsye and the kids got out and started walking. As Archie was parking the car, his wife called out to him, “Look what I found, dear.”

Something made Archie bolt into the woods, calling, “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it!” But it was too late.

Elsye and all five teenagers were killed by the blast.

What exactly had Elsye discovered in those woods?

Immediately following the explosion, a rescue team, a sheriff, and the Army were called to the scene. The military personnel found a large deflated balloon, debris from a bomb that had exploded, and four more bombs that had not gone off.

Back in Bly, it was obvious that something had gone terribly wrong as men in uniform trod in and out of the woods. Rumors began to swirl. Family members of the victims were contacted and sworn to secrecy. Eva Fowler, Elsye’s sister, said, “We were all told not to talk about this over the phone. It was not to be put in the newspapers, or on the radio, or anything.”

At a press conference the next day, officials reported the loss of the only Americans to die as a direct action of the enemy in the continental United States during World War II. The official word was that it was “an explosion of unknown origin.” But the military knew exactly what it was. It was one of the best-kept secrets of World War II.

It had all started five months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, when America retaliated. The retaliation took the form of the Doolittle Raid, an attack on Tokyo by air, which sent a clear message to the Japanese that they were vulnerable at home.

Japan, in turn, was determined to instill fear in the American people, to make them realize that they, too, could be attacked within their own borders. The Japanese set out to invent a weapon that would be able to reach the continental United States.

They succeeded.

Their clever invention began with their discovery of the narrow and powerful air currents we now know as the jet stream. The Japanese realized they could use the jet stream to float bomb-laden balloons across the sea from Japan to the continental United States. But first they had to produce thousands of balloons.

While Japanese men assembled bombs, figuring out how to attach them to the balloons, and determined when they would need to drop, Japanese women were put to work making the balloons that would carry the bombs. By hand, they made a special kind of strong tissue paper called washi from the bark of mulberry trees. They formed the paper into different-size sheets, which were then glued together by hundreds of Japanese schoolgirls. Toshiko Inoue was one of those girls.

“It was work more difficult than you could ever imagine. We took sheets of washi and cut them on the board. Each piece was glued to another piece and left to dry. This process was repeated . . . until it was five layers thick.”

Yaeko Yokomizo had vivid memories of the atmosphere: “We glued the washi together using a paste called konnyaku glue, prepared by adding water to a huge pot of glue and stirring for two hours. During the very hottest days, we worked where children [would normally have] parked their bikes and the playgrounds were used for drying.” Food was in short supply because of the war, and groups of officers watched over hungry workers to make sure they were only doing their jobs and not eating any of the paste.

Hundreds of Japanese girls worked to cut sheets of washi paper and then glue pieces together to make thick layers for the balloon construction.

Japanese girls stand at the base of an inflated balloon. This photo could have been taken during the last stage of production, in which they would have painted on lacquer to waterproof the balloon. It also shows the scale of its size.

If it seems strange that schoolchildren were a labor force for weapons of war, Tetsuko Tanaka remembers that this was just how life was in Japan at that time: “My education stressed contributing to the war effort and being a patriot. . . . We were ordered not only to work but to lay down our lives for our country.” Inoue agreed: “We worked each day to exhaustion, ate a tiny meal and went to bed. . . . There was no time left for thinking.” Inoue’s teacher told her, “Don’t think too much about it. . . . Don’t harbor any doubts. . . . Just do the work without complaining.”

The Japanese military hoped that the balloon bombs would land in American forests and set them on fire. They assumed the fires would require immediate attention and take focus away from the war effort. American troops would be pulled away from what they were doing overseas to protect the home front, and panic would ensue. The Japanese also wanted to boost morale among their people. They wanted to show that they were doing everything possible to fight the enemy. To this end, the Japanese launched more than 9,000 balloon bombs. And then they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Perhaps, the Japanese worried, it had all been for nothing. Their balloon-bomb project seemed to be a failure. Otherwise, they would certainly have begun to get word of explosions, fires, or at the very least, some of the balloons being spotted. In fact, the Japanese counted on what they perceived as the chatty nature of Americans to alert them that their bombs were indeed wreaking havoc. But the Americans weren’t talking.

The silence was intentional. Just because Japan wasn’t receiving any news reports or panic alerts about their balloon bombs didn’t mean the U.S. military hadn’t noticed. They just didn’t want Japan to think their plan was working.

Reports of strange bomb sightings had been coming in since November 1944, when a U.S. Navy ship had pulled the remains of one on board. Other encounters had followed. A flash of light and the sound of an explosion outside her house startled a mother putting her child to bed one evening. A man and his son out chopping wood came across something that looked like a parachute. It turned out to be a Japanese balloon bomb.

Pieces of balloons were being recovered in many western states, including Wyoming, California, and Alaska, as well as parts of western Canada and northern Mexico. They were even found as far east as Michigan. In Oregon, soldiers were brought in to search for suspected remains of an unexploded balloon bomb. The scariest moment may well have been when a balloon got tangled in the electrical lines of an atomic energy plant (which happened to be making part of the atomic bomb that would later be dropped on Nagasaki) in Hanford, Washington, causing a brief power outage. It was quickly fixed, but it would have been disastrous if one of the bombs had detonated.

This balloon was recovered near Davis, California, in March 1945. It helped the military reconstruct a complete unit to study. To create this photo, the photographer moved around the balloon with flashbulbs to illuminate it in eight places. The sandbags and incendiary bombs are hanging at right.

This balloon was recovered near Alturas, California, on January 10, 1945. It was inflated for testing at Moffett Field at the naval base near San Francisco, California.

The press was asked to keep all these incidents quiet. Newsweek and Time magazines ran minor mentions, but the press generally did its part. The Japanese were fooled into thinking that their balloon bombs were not reaching America. That still didn’t stop them from spreading rumors to the contrary. The Japanese broadcast to their nation, as well as parts of Europe and China, that their balloons had claimed hundreds of lives, caused many forest fires, and frightened the American people.

Of course, the people in Bly had been frightened. Once she was finally told what had happened, Diane Jordan, sister of one of the boys who was killed, said, “We knew we were at war, but the thought of war coming right to our front door never entered our minds.” Shortly after those six deaths, officials did begin to lift the secrecy, at least in a small, controlled way. The military realized that the public needed to be quietly alerted to the danger, even though there was still a ban on major news stories.

The only truth in the announcements Japan made was the major concern the balloon bombs could set American forests on fire. The Naval Research Laboratory had been investigating the balloons, and as early as January 18, 1945, its officials stated: “It must be assumed that a considerable number are coming over. . . . When the dry season arrives considerable damage will result unless effective countermeasures are developed.” It was clear that the authorities had to stay on top of this threat. They needed more men to deal with the situation.

Amid the threat of the balloon bombs, an unusually heavy lightning season, and the usual irresponsible campers, the Forest Service had its hands full. It reached out to the military for help. The Air Force was called upon to shoot down the balloon bombs on sight, and the Triple Nickles were brought in to assist the firefighters.

Fully equipped to smokejump, a group of Triple Nickles is briefed by their jumpmaster at Pendleton, Oregon. Their gear includes helmet, wire face guard, two parachutes (main and reserve), first-aid kit, 150 feet of rope in case of a tree landing, personal kit, and boots. Shovels and other gear are dropped later.

Bradley Biggs reflected on the Triple Nickles’ unusual transition to Operation Firefly: “[We had to] trade in our rifles . . . for a shovel . . . and a hoe. We weren’t trained to do that.” Nevertheless, the men wasted no time. “We’ve got a job to do, we’ve got orders, we’ve got a mission; that’s it. We’ll do it and we’ll do it well.”

That didn’t mean they were happy about it.

“We felt it was a dodge to avoid using us in combat,” Roger Walden said.

He may have been right.

In the meantime, they got to work.

“We were soldiers. We did what we had to do,” Morris said.

Since smokejumping was a relatively new practice for the Forest Service, the Triple Nickles were on the cutting edge of learning this new method of fighting fires. It would require some additional training. First off, they had been taught to avoid trees, not jump down into them! And jumping into a forest lit up like a million candles was a far cry from dropping onto an open field.

The men were split into two groups: some stayed in Pendleton, Oregon, and others were sent to Chico, California. In May and June, they trained as firefighters and smokejumpers, and some — including Walden and Biggs — learned how to collect and dismantle the bombs. The Forest Service men were excellent teachers.

“They could walk up the hills like a cat,” Biggs wrote. He was impressed. “They taught us how to climb, use an axe, and what vegetation to eat.” Part of the 555th’s training involved learning how to use a new kind of parachute designed by a smokejumper named Frank Derry. These so-called Derry chutes gave jumpers the ability to steer — a much-needed advantage when coming down into a sea of trees.

By July, the Triple Nickles were ready to be the U.S. Army’s only smokejumpers.

To check how the wind was blowing, they watched which way the smoke shifted from the fire. When they jumped, they had to make sure not to hit any rocks or get tangled up in trees. They had traded in their paratrooper steel helmets for football helmets fitted with a simple square of wire mesh — the only thing keeping the branches from tearing up their faces.

A jump could put them down in the fire for days, so the supplies they needed — food, first-aid and fire-fighting equipment — had to be dropped, too. The amount of water it would have taken to fight a fire was too heavy to carry, so only enough water for drinking was dropped.

Before they could even start fighting a fire, they had to untangle their lines, shed their heavy jumpsuits, and pack up their gear. It was difficult for the men to breathe due to all the smoke. The fires were hot enough to singe their eyebrows.

Pendleton, Oregon, August 1945. There were only nine black parachute riggers in the Army, and they worked with the 555th. Packing a chute properly is serious business, and any rigger knew any trooper could ask him to jump with one of the chutes he packed.

Triple Nickles member Clyde Thomas boards a Troop Carrier Command plane loaded down with all the equipment he needs for a fire-fighting mission.

Flames had to be put out, and hotspots covered. Hotspots are places where no fire is visible but the ground is so hot that it smokes. If these spots aren’t covered, they can burst into flame at any second. Jordon “J J” Corbett had joined the 555th in November 1944 and was among those who had traveled to Pendleton. “You could have a fire almost put out,” he remembered, “and it would spark and then all of a sudden, zoom! A big fire would start back up.”

Week after week, they put out fires. They searched for balloon bombs to dismantle.

Sometimes the fires were enormous. “The largest fire we had required a hundred men jumping at once,” Walden remembered.

Sometimes it was so dark it was impossible to see the guy in front of you. It didn’t matter how dark or hot or smoky it got; each man made sure no one got lost or swallowed up in the smoke. “We stank of smoke and fought to keep upwind of it,” Biggs recalled.

At night, they took turns sleeping on the ground or being on watch. They had to look out for fire flare-ups or animals wandering into camp. “We had to fight rattlesnakes; we were fighting bears,” Biggs said, his eyes opening wide at the thought. The bears had caught on fast that food was dropping from the sky and had started hightailing it to the Drop Zones. “We worked hard and ate like horses,” Biggs said. It was no fun when the bears got to the food first.

After jumping near a fire with the 555th and setting up his stove — dropped by parachute — Sergeant Theodore Kaing puts on his chef clothes and begins cooking for the men.

Sometimes missions lasted four or five days and were many miles into the woods. “The area on fire could be twenty-five miles away from the road,” Morris said. “These were really remote areas,” Ted Lowry remembered. “We jumped in around the fire and contained it until the regular firefighters, who traveled on mules, could get up there.”

August 1945. The paratroopers dropped in on fires that would have taken days to reach otherwise. Here, Triple Nickles stomp out a fire and cover hotspots in an inaccessible part of the Umatilla National Forest.

At the end of a mission, they would pack up their gear and walk back to the base, miles out of the forest. Muscles aching, covered in grit and grime, all they wanted to do was rest their weary bones and sleep — after pouring cold drinks down their scorched throats.

But the club on the base wouldn’t let them in. No coloreds allowed.