Hysterical Journey To Historic Places

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SMOKEY BEAR



During World War II able bodied men from all over joined the armed services and it created a manpower shortage within the Forest Service to fight wildfires. The Forest Service was compelled to launch an advertising campaign directed at fire prevention because it was thought that during wartime forest fires would create havoc. The Ad Council printed up some posters featuring caricatures of Nazis and Japs and sure enough our friends in Japan saw them and in 1942 they fire bombed coastal forests in Oregon. The fire bombs were dropped from a float plane carried on a submarine. It was a cumbersome effort that was deemed a failure because no fires got out of control. No more fire bombs were dropped, but in 1944 the Forest Service was still worried about fires and launched another ad campaign featuring a bear this time dressed up in blue jeans with a ranger hat on his head. Sure enough our friends in Japan saw them again and launched a bunch of high altitude fire balloons into the Jetstream. One of them fell to earth near Bly, Oregon but it was dud. A woman and some kids found it and got to fooling with it until it blew up killing them all. It was the only havoc caused by the fire campaign. In 1950 a scalded bear cub was found in a fire in the Lincoln Forest near Capitan Gap, New Mexico. It was rescued by fire fighters and named Hotfoot Teddy. It was brought back to health and lived happily in the National Zoo in Washington DC until it died in 1976. He was dubbed Smokey Bear and became the beloved fire prevention icon for millions of Americans. The photo shows Smokey’s grave.

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