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Of all the crazy and unthinkable plans of the Allies to take on the Axis powers during their years Second World War, there is also a station between them.
A really scandalous idea that aimed to hit the enemy at their strongest point: men’s morale.
It was said that “Operation Fantasy” was brilliant because it had so much.
In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, William Donovan himself, the “Wild Bill” as he would be known, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the United States military intelligence service that would later become the INC, asked his agents and academics to find ways to demoralize the Nazis and the Japanese.
And they gave him a long series of dirty tricks, like cake with explosives, bombs tied to batsReal serums to extract information from prisoners of war, even a stinky spray that filled the space with the unpleasant smell of the toilet.
Difficult times called for desperate solutions out of the ordinary, one could say, only that even in this context, “Operation Imagination” had no equal …
A business with a lot of imagination
“Operation Fantasy” was the intellectual son of the leader of his psychological warfare US, Ed Salinger. He was neither a scientist nor an agent, despite the fact that an eccentric businessman did business with Tokyo (import / export) before the war.
His business with the Land of the Rising Sun, however, had brought him in contact, albeit superficially, with Japanese culture.
He knew the language, was a collector of traditional Japanese art, and even studied the superstitions of the people as an amateur.
And it was this last trait that convinced General Donovan to hire him and put him in charge of the psychological warfare department. And so in 1943 Salinger conceived the idea that would break the proverbial morality of Japanese.
Salinger had studied Shinto, the dominant religion in Japan at the time, and was familiar with kitsune spirits, which were considered a bad omen for everyone.
The kitsune was shaped like a fox, possessed magical properties, and was exactly the kind of prejudice that Donovan sought to instill fear and anxiety in soldiers and civilians.
“The basis of the proposal,” wrote Salinger in the preface to the memorandum with his idea, “is based on the fact that modern Japan is full of superstitions, beliefs in evil spirits and supernatural manifestations that can be mobilized and sharpened ”.
And then he thought… radioactive foxes that would radiate an eerie glow and terrorize the enemy, predicting bad blankets for the outcome of the war!
The mythical spirits would come to life and all the Japanese would receive the message that the gods were against their war. Leaving, why not, even weapons.
When asked how he planned to create these fake kitsune, they saw that Salinger and his team were not short of ideas, nothing more. The first version released was with radiant shaped balloons foxes to go through towns and cities sowing terror in the inhabitants.
They even turned to a whistling company to turn them into a doll that mimics the sounds of a fox. Salinger had bet heavily on this idea.
He characteristically writes in his internal memories: “These whistles can be used in battle and a sufficient number of them will create a strange sound which, we estimate, will activate the Japanese bias.”
And since the thing was not only serious, but also an absolute priority, the Office of Strategic Services hired another company to recreate the smell of fox in the laboratory. They were looking for such plausibility for their plan.
Salinger here assumed that the Japanese would somehow recognize the fox’s scent. In the same way that people would know the sounds that the carnivorous animal rarely makes. And then they would be scared like never before.
However, despite their best efforts, the Bureau deemed this all “impractical” – balloons, hisses and smells – and was now promoting Salinger’s bachelorette scheme, which was, to put it more simply: catch live foxes in China and Australia and spray them with phosphorescent paint, then drop them in the Japanese countryside!
Accounting problems
But even when everyone agreed, the plan presented a number of challenges that required more thought and better organization. And first of all, what kind of paint would they use to paint the animals?
The answer was given here by the infamous United States Radium Corporation, which had already developed a glow-in-the-dark color. It contained radio. And everyone knew its dangers radioactive element, as already in 1917 the company was in the vortex of the cyclone.
The workers in their factories, the “Radio Girls”, as they were tragically known, were infected by radioactive paint work (they painted watch faces to look in the dark) and suffered from anemia, necrosis of body parts and many more afflictions.
By 1938, many of them had been sued for permanent health problems, and of course the OSS was aware of all this. And still, he considered that the purpose sanctifies the media and gave the green light to continue with “Operation Imagination”.
Next reef to climb? How will the radioactive dye stay on the fox fur? Here Salinger enlisted the help of Harry Nimphius, a veterinarian at his zoo. Central Park from New York.
Despite his know-how, the vet who became world famous when he treated a paralyzed elephant and cured a canary with a broken leg even admitted that he had no idea how this could be done.
And then he asked for the help of a raccoon, who was willing to lend his fur for experiments in exchange for daily treats.
The guinea pig was kept out of sight and OSS agents guarded the lab overnight. A few days later, Nimphius had found a way to prevent the dye from falling out of his hair.
Everything turned out fine, except perhaps for this embarrassing question that finally came up: How could they be sure that these supernatural foxes would terrorize the Japanese?
The great bosses of the Office had the solution again: they would free 30 glowing foxes in a park of Washington and watch the reactions of the locals. If they scared the Americans, who had no such precautions, imagine what they would do to the superstitious Japanese!
By then we had reached 1945, but let it be. And so one summer night, OSS staff released the foxes in the park and the experiment showed “promising results,” according to the efficacy report.
The radiant foxes terrorized passersby with some alerting the national park police, who wrote in their report: “Terrified residents, shocked by the sudden appearance of ghost animals, run screaming through the dark deserts of the park.”
All ready
“Operation Imagination” was working and everyone involved was delighted. Just one more procedural trick would go to spoil the beautiful atmosphere: how would the foxes get to the islands of Japan?
Salinger suggested that they be dumped into the sea and that they would find their way to the shores, only to be in danger for the animals’ lives. Could foxes swim long distances? Yes, Nimphius said, but Salinger had to control it.
So in the morning mist of one of the following days, they collected many of them and put them on a boat bound for the Chesapeake Bay, the river’s largest estuary. United States. When the engines stopped, they were thrown one by one into the frozen ocean to see if they would sink or swim.
And they swam, bringing joy to those who had worked for the project for so long. Now they were ready to invade Japan. There were no other embankments!
But as soon as they reached land, most of the radioactive paint had been washed off with water. Worse still, the foxes licked out what was left, wiping the smile from the staff’s lips.
There was no problem for Ed Salinger, he would throw his foxes straight to the ground. Even so, owning one is still out of reach for the average person.
How could they be sure that animals would stay close to humans and would not prefer their tranquility away from them? Especially when they heard thunder from cannons and weapons?
The intrepid Salinger had the solution ready again: big numbers. “If we release many foxes, some will pass away,” he wrote in another of his internal memoirs.
And if the foxes finally fail, an army of radioactively stained foxes raccoon, coyotes, minks and ferrets would replace them with dignity.
Success was in his pocket …
And finally;
If we’ve never heard of Operation Fantasy in WWII, it’s because it never happened. Already on September 24, 1943, the head of the OSS Research and Development Department, Stanley Lovell, tore his clothes with the obvious folly of the project.
As he repeatedly stated in group meetings, he could not understand why no one questioned the logic, expediency, and efficiency of such company.
“I suspect this will serve us as criticism in the field of pure logic!” He complained to his colleagues.
Even for Lovell, that is, a man with similar crazy ideas, it meant that we do Hitler To lose their mustache by pouring female hormones into their vegetables (!), the radioactive foxes exceeded their resistance to irrationality.
The minutes of the last OSS meeting, near the end of the war, reveal a remarkable relief to those present at the definitive abandonment of the plan.
“The problem of the ‘Fantasy'”, they conclude, “was resolved politely” …
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