|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Nukes |
|
Grief Overflows, Anger Flares As Hiroshima Bomber Goes On Display |
Current rating: 0 |
by AFP
(No verified email address) |
16 Dec 2003
|
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometers (miles) from the epicenter of the blast, and still bears scars from his burns.
"The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky.
"When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger." |
|
Demonstrators protest at the Enola Gay exhibit at the the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum'sSteven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, on opening day in Chantilly, Virginia. (AFP/Joyce Naltchayan)
Grief overflowed and anger erupted as aged Japanese survivors confronted the Enola Gay, the US warplane which unleashed the world's first atom bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
Six survivors and around 50 peace activists held up pictures of hideously burned victims among the tens of thousands killed or injured by the blast, as the restored and shiny silver Boeing B-29 Superfortress loomed overhead.
The Enola Gay was put on display for the first time in one piece on opening day for a vast new annex to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, which also includes a just retired French Concorde and space shuttle prototype.
One protestor threw a bag of paint at the aircraft, and was hauled away by police, though activists could not identify the man.
It was not clear if the Enola Gay was damaged.
The vigil stirred anger among some visitors to the museum, just under the flightpath of Dulles international airport outside Washington.
"Remember Pearl Harbor" "Go home" "What about the Nanjing massacre?" several men shouted in references to the imperial Japanese army, as several scuffles broke out with activists.
Other men, including several US war veterans, took part in animated arguments which peace activists. Several young Japanese visitors to the museum were overcome by emotion and in tears.
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometers (miles) from the epicenter of the blast, and still bears scars from his burns.
"The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky.
"When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger."
Another survivor, Tamiko Tomonaga, 74, said she had come to see the plane in memory of all those who died in the twin atom bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the closing days of World War II.
Survivors are disappointed the plane is being displayed with no reference to casualty figures at Hiroshima, which some estimates say reach 230,000 people, when those who died in later years of radiation poisoning are included.
"We would not mind the plane going on display if they showed the tragedy they caused" Tomonaga, who was a Red Cross nurse at the time of the bombing said.
The Enola Gay bears a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II."
The text mentions the technological prowess of the aircraft and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe."
"On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
As survivors and activists mounted their protest, some visitors to the museum reacted with anger, reflecting raw feelings left over the war, nearly 60 years after the United States and Japan made peace.
"They (Japan) started the war by bombing our servicemen in Pearl Harbor, they should go and stand on the deck of the Arizona," said one man who refused to give his name, referring to a US ship sunk in the raid, now a memorial.
Joe Lassals, in tears but unwilling to say why he was moved to come here, said, "I am thinking of all the American soldiers who were killed -- why don't they remember them?"
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll from the Hiroshima bombings included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he told AFP. "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
The museum says its stance is consistent with the mission entrusted to it by US Congress, which is to display and preserve historic and technologically significant air and space craft.
Copyright 2003 AFP
http://www.afp.com |
See also:
http://www.enola-gay.org/
|
Comments
|
Ugly History Hides In Plain Sight |
by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Dec 2003
|
This week, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum unveiled a fully restored, finely polished artifact of World War II — a Boeing B-29 "Superfortress." This particular airplane — the Enola Gay — is the centerpiece of the museum's sleek new $311-million annex.
Visitors to the museum will read a brief label identifying the Enola Gay as "the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments."
Schoolchildren will learn that the plane's wingspan is 141 feet and 3 inches, and that it had a top speed of 339 mph.
But does such a history lesson justify a field trip to a museum? Isn't there something more important about the Enola Gay that our children should know?
Of course there is, and the museum's brief label provides a hint. Its final sentence notes, almost as an afterthought, that "On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
Some curious children might want to ask questions about that last sentence. What does an atomic bomb do when it is dropped? Why was one dropped on a city? What happened to the people in Hiroshima? Was it necessary to drop it?
The answers to these questions should be part of any American child's (and adult's) education, but retired Gen. John Dailey, the Air & Space Museum's director, insists that that aspect of their education is not the museum's responsibility: "We are displaying it [the Enola Gay] in all its glory as a magnificent technological achievement…. Our primary focus is that it was the most advanced aircraft in the world at the time."
In other words, the consequences of its historic mission are beside the point.
This is as ridiculous as it is disingenuous.
The Smithsonian doesn't limit its observations to technological advances when it displays weapons invented and used by other nations. The exhibit of Germany's V-2 is accompanied with photographs of the slave workers who built the rockets and the bodies of civilians killed by them.
Displaying the Enola Gay as just another B-29 is a charade — undertaken because our national museum is afraid to deal honestly with the consequences of the plane's historic mission.
The first and most immediate of those consequences was the death of 140,000 people — 95% of whom were civilians. After that, the consequences become contentious.
According to President Harry Truman, one direct consequence was the decision of the Japanese to surrender — after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8 and the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9. But others have insisted that the atomic bombings were not necessary to end the war.
It is an interesting and relevant fact that this controversy was initiated in 1945 by conservatives such as Time magazine publisher Henry Luce, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin and David Lawrence, editor of U.S. News, who wrote in October 1945: "Competent testimony exists to prove that Japan was seeking to surrender many weeks before the atomic bomb came."
This is a view that historical research has confirmed. The discovery of President Truman's handwritten private diary, for example, revealed that on July 18, 1945, he had read a "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace…. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan [atomic bomb] appears over their homeland." And again, on Aug. 3, 1945, Walter Brown, an aide to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, noted in his diary that Truman and his aides "agreed Japs looking for peace…. "
How nations deal with their histories can be an exacting litmus test of national character.
Throughout Asia, the Japanese are reviled for their dishonest refusal to acknowledge their barbarous behavior during their occupations of China, Korea and the countries of Southeast Asia. Our nation's uneasy relationship to the historical debate over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is such a test and, despite history's patient annual re- administration of it, the U.S. has yet to achieve a passing grade.
As a result, we find ourselves — ironically it must be said — in the same remedial national history class as the Japanese. And we are certain to remain there, mocked by world opinion, as long as our misguided sense of American exceptionalism continues to dictate that public displays of American history be morally pure and patriotically correct.
Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin are co-authors of a forthcoming biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times |
|
