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News :: Nukes |
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A-Bomb Survivors To Protest New Exhibit |
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by AP
(No verified email address) |
01 Dec 2003
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Suffering and deaths of thousands ignored in new Smithsonian exhibit of the world's first atmoic bomber, the Enola Gay |
TOKYO (AP) -- Survivors said Monday they will ask the Smithsonian Institution to include figures and photographs of Japanese casualties in a new exhibit of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb.
The Japan Confederation of A-Bomb and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations plans to send a team to Washington on Dec. 11 to deliver a petition, the group said on its Web site.
They will stage a protest outside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where the restored Enola Gay is to be on display from Dec. 15.
``As victims of the A-bombs, we can't bear to have the Enola Gay, which killed thousands of Hiroshima residents, on public display without including details of the destruction it wrought,'' Terumi Tanaka, the organization's director, was quoted as saying by the Kyodo news agency.
The B-29 bomber, which has been under restoration since 1984, is one of 200 historic aircraft in the new hangar-like museum.
On Monday, museum spokesman Peter Golkin referred questions about the exhibit to a statement released in early November.
The planned Enola Gay exhibit ``does not glorify or vilify the role this aircraft played in history,'' and will feature similarly labeled warplanes, the statement said.
It said the Enola Gay's sign will ``tell visitors what the object is and the basic facts concerning its history,'' including details about its size, technological advances and missions.
The Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, killing or injuring 160,000 people in the city 430 miles southwest of Tokyo. The pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets, named the aircraft after his mother. Three days later, another U.S. aircraft dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu, killing about 70,000 people. On Aug. 15, 1945, Japan's surrender ended World War II.
For more information on the issues surrounding the new exhibit of the Enola Gay, see:
http://www.enola-gay.org/ |
