“A panoramic portrait of civilians trapped on opposing sides of a conflict beyond their control.”
Seattle Weekly
About the Film
During WWII, the Japanese military developed a new weapon intended to strike directly at the American continent – the balloon bomb. High school girls across Japan were conscripted into factories where they worked long days making paper to be assembled into giant balloons. These young students lived difficult lives as the war worsened for Japan. Most had no idea that the balloons they were making would be attached to bombs and then launched into the jet stream to drift toward North America. The idea sounded ludicrous, but thousands of balloon bombs were launched by the Japanese military, and hundreds did arrive after being carried by the wind across the Pacific. On May 5th, 1945, a pastor, his pregnant wife, and five children departed on a picnic just outside of Bly, Oregon. When they found an un-detonated balloon bomb in the forest, the device exploded, killing the pastor’s wife and all five children. They became the only people killed on the continental U.S. as the result of enemy action during WWII.
As families in Bly struggled to cope with the balloon bomb explosion, a young Japanese American man was living in an internment camp just sixty miles away. The Tule Lake Segregation Center in northern California was one of ten War Relocation Camps established by the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. As thousands of people of Japanese ancestry were forced to leave their homes and take up residence in the isolated camps, Yuzuru “John” Takeshita was a young American citizen who suddenly found himself living behind barbed wire in his own country.
While in the camp, he heard rumors of balloon bombs flying over the Pacific from Japan, but he never saw one. It would be forty years before he ever heard of them again.
In 1985, a series of events led John Takeshita to find out about the balloon bomb project and the incident in Bly. He met several Japanese women who as young girls were forced to make paper for the balloon bomb project. When he sent them the names and ages of those killed in Oregon, they were shocked and saddened. These women had experienced first-hand the total devastation that WWII brought to their own country, and now they saw an opportunity to reach out for peace.
These women decided to fold a thousand origami paper cranes to offer to the families of those killed in Bly. It was a decision that would heal wounds on both sides of the Pacific as friendships were formed, and the groups eventually all met face to face.
“On Paper Wings” is a documentary film about the lives of the Japanese and American civilians who were affected by the balloon bomb project, and how they all came together forty years after the end of the war.
Total Run Time: 67 minutes
To watch the film, visit our Watch page.
“On Paper Wings” has screened at 19 film festivals and won 7 awards. Find out what the press had to say on our News page.
About the Filmmaker
Ilana Sol is a filmmaker and archival producer living in Portland, Oregon. She has worked in the film industry for over 25 years on a variety of independent, educational, and commercial projects. She enjoys searching through archives to find unknown stories about American history, which led to the making of her two documentary films. The first film, ON PAPER WINGS (2008), won seven awards. It was written about in Smithsonian Magazine and was included in an episode of NPR’s Radiolab. SAMURAI IN THE OREGON SKY (2019) is her second film and has won three awards. Both tell stories of post-WWII peace and reconciliation.
Ilana’s love of archival research led her to obtain a master’s degree in Library Science with a concentration in Archives. She now works predominantly as an archival producer, combining her 2 passions of documentary film and archives. Her work as an archival producer can be seen in multiple documentaries including LEAVE NO TRACE (Hulu), TREES, AND OTHER ENTANGLEMENTS (HBO), I AM: CELINE DION (Amazon), and THE WINDING STREAM. She has also conducted research for exhibits at the Smithsonian, the Oregon Historical Society, and other museums.
To find out more about her work, please explore the websites for her two films, ON PAPER WINGS and SAMURAI IN THE OREGON SKY. You can also read her archival writings here:
Scenes from the Rails: How the SP&S Railway Transformed the Pacific Northwest
A 1905 “Slice-of-Life” View of Portland’s East Side
