Wasaburo Oishi
Encyclopedia
was a Japanese meteorologist. Born in Tosu, Saga
Tosu, Saga
is a city located in the east part of Saga Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū, Japan.-Overview:Tosu is one of the major transportation hubs of Kyūshū. Its main train station is Tosu Station which connects the Nagasaki Main Line and the Kagoshima Main Line. There is also a junction connecting the...

, he is best known for his discovery of the high-altitude air currents now known as the jet stream
Jet stream
Jet streams are fast flowing, narrow air currents found in the atmospheres of some planets, including Earth. The main jet streams are located near the tropopause, the transition between the troposphere and the stratosphere . The major jet streams on Earth are westerly winds...

. He was also an important Esperantist
Esperantist
An Esperantist is a person who speaks or uses Esperanto. Etymologically, an Esperantist is someone who hopes...

, serving as the second Board President of the Japan Esperanto-Institute from 1930 to 1945.

Jet stream

He wrote the first official report from Japan's Aerological Observatory (written in 1926 and in the auxiliary language of Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

). In this report, data was stratified by season and used to produce the mean seasonal wind profiles. The profile for winter gave the first known evidence of the persistent strong westerlies over Japan that would later become known as the jet stream.

World War II

Wasaburo's studies on the jet stream enabled Japan to attack North America during World War II with at least 9,000 incendiary bombs carried by stratospheric balloons
Fire balloon
A , or Fu-Go, was a weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen balloon with a load varying from a incendiary to one antipersonnel bomb and four incendiary devices attached, they were designed as a cheap weapon intended to make use of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and wreak...

and then dropped by a timer mechanism on U.S. forests.
Very few bombs in this bombing campaign, called Project Fugo, actually reached their targets.
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