Fugo: Death From the Sky And Government Censorship In my previous post, Fugo And My Fallible Memory , I mentioned that I was quoted in a recent issue of Saucer Smear , an excerpt from a snail mail letter. Regarding a possible Roswell-fugo balloon connection, I had said that during World War II the US government kept the public unaware that bomb-packed balloons –- all the way from Japan –- had reached the United States. I wrote: “…that’s how our government works: Prevent panic but put unsuspecting citizens in danger with the cover-up.” After doing some research, I still think the government went too far with the censorship over the fugo attacks. But the problem of censorship and the public’s right to know isn’t that cut and dry, as the events surrounding the fugo story demonstrate. While the government was concerned about panic and fear, it had another reason to keep any fugo incidents out of the print and broadcast media: it didn’t want word to get back to Japan how successful the
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Fugo and My Fallible Memory Time to correct the record – that is, my record. In the latest issue of Saucer Smear (Feb. 15th, 2009) there’s an excerpt from a snail mail letter I wrote to writer-editor Jim Moseley. I was commenting on a previous issue: “On page 3 you mentioned John Keel’s theory re: the Roswell crash, that what fell was a WW II era Japanese fire balloon (fugo). If I remember correctly someone found one and it went off, killing him. The U.S. government was keeping the fugo problem out of the press to stave off panic. Of course, if the public knew about the balloons, that one guy who died would’ve avoided it all costs if he knew the danger. But that’s how our government works: Prevent panic but put unsuspecting citizens in danger with the cover-up.” Jim did a good job excerpting my letter. There’s no problem with him misquoting me or taking what I wrote out of context. The problem is with my memory and my lack of fact checking. There was indeed an incident during W
Saint Jung? I found the two glossy cards seen above at a downtown coffeehouse. As an ex-Catholic these remind me of prayer cards depicting various saints. I’ve got nothing against Carl Jung; somewhere in this rambling mess that dominates my apartment is a copy of FLYING SAUCERS: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. But the photos used on the promotional cards are so reverential that -- at least to my jaded mind’s eye -- they smack of religiosity. I hope that after I shed my mortal coil that people won’t idealize me, promulgating all sorts of hagiographic works. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t worry about that at all, especially with the devout Carl Jung followers in Vermont.
Congrats… …to Jim Moseley, writer-editor of Saucer Smear . Apparently his zine is the oldest UFO publication in the world. Dennis Plunkett of the British Flying Saucer Bureau confirmed this unique status in a letter to Supreme Commander Moseley. Plunkett stated that the BFSB no longer published a magazine, leaving Moseley with the honor. Of course, Saucer Smear has been published under various names throughout the decades, but always under the creative control of Moseley. A computer-Luddite, Moseley still puts together each issue with a typewriter, scissors, and tape. If you want to own a bit of saucerana, send him a couple of well-concealed dollar bills to: James W. Moseley PO Box 1709 Key West, FL 33041
Distractions… ..or why haven’t I been posting lately. I’ll skip over the health issues, except to say I have a limited amount of energy, especially of the creative kind. One distraction was my website . I wanted to upload a PDF file of the latest issue of my print zine. The link wouldn’t work. Also, others links were broken/bad. I tried fixing them but nada. After three phone calls to the company hosting my site, it turned out the program I was using to create web pages was adding extraneous info, detailing where the file was located on my harddrive. Previously I had used Mozilla Suite with Composer but when cleaning up my drives I deleted it. Composing web pages with Netscape Navigator 4.5 wasn’t cutting it. So I went back online and discovered that the only way I could get Composer was to download Sea Monkey. It took a while to do that with my dial-up connection. Anyway, the website links are fixed and the PDF file is up. Hours wasted just to get to that point. I’m wonderi