Nobuo Fujita - Wikipedia
Nobuo Fujita (藤田 信雄 , Fujita Nobuo ) (1911 – 30 September 1997) was a Japanese naval aviator of the Imperial Japanese Navy who flew a floatplane from the long-range submarine aircraft carrier I-25 and conducted the Lookout Air Raids in southern Oregon on September 9, 1942, making him the only Axis pilot during World War II to aerial bomb the contiguous United States.[ 1] [ 2] [ 3] Using incendiary bombs, his mission was to start massive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest near the city of Brookings, Oregon, with the objective of drawing the U.S. military's resources away from the Pacific Theater. The strategy was also later used in the Japanese fire balloon campaign.
In 1962 Fujita was invited to Brookings where he gave his family's 400-year-old katana to the city in friendship, Fujita later sponsored a trip for Brookings high school students to visit Japan in 1985 and returned to the city again in 1990, 1992, and 1995. In 1997, a few days before his death, Fujita was made an honorary citizen of the city.
Nobuo Fujita joined the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1932 and became a pilot in 1933. Fujita also had a younger brother who was killed in the war.[ 4]
