Help Needed in Seattle

[HAHalliday]

The Sergeant Scratch story ran on page 1 of the Vancouver Daily Province (an afternoon paper) on the very day it happened under a headline, "Pilot Runs Amok, Crashes Bomber", with subsequent follow-up over the next two days including back-grounding on how he had been court-martialled following a solo joy-ride in a Liberator (in Newfoundland) the previous summer - so the incident was not a subject for Canadian censorship.

Censorship of such matters would be most severe when information might have some operational value to the enemy - and the Scratch story hardly qualifies as a sensitive topic of interest to said enemy. On the other hand, when Japanese incendiary balloons began arriving in North America in November 1944, American and Canadian authorities asked newspapers not to publish reports of their appearances (even though they were seen by hundreds if not thousands of people). I understand that at least one major newspaper had the story written up and typeset, ready to roll if any other paper broke the embargo, but none did. Consequently, the Japanese had no feedback about the balloons arriving and gave up the campaign in mid-April 1945. When, in early May 1945, six Oregon picnickers were killed by a balloon-delivered bomb they discovered in the woods, the decision was made that continued silence was dangerous to the public, the military itself issued press releases (22 May 1945) revealing the existance and nature of the weapons.