Enola Gay?

D

DasBoot

Moderator
Don't know if this belongs here.
Watched a movie starring Robert Taylor as Col. Paul Tibbets last night.
It prompted me to read up on the man.
While perusing the info on the B-29, it states that the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian was closed on May 18th, 1998 and the parts put in storage.
PLEASE!!! Don't tell me this was done for some poitical reasons!!!!:mad:
Like, we don't want to offend Japanese visitors to the museum.
Or the Left cried "it represents a dark moment in American history".
Etc, etc,.
Does anyone know why such an historically significant exhibit would be closed?
I mean, it's not like this plane just ran another run-of-the-mill bombing raid, is it?
In fact, I'm gonna go to the Smithsonian site and try to find out.
Maybe I'll call them!
 
A little addendum to my previous post.
While reading up on the Manhattan Project, it states that when Pres. Roosevelt suddenly, died and VP Truman took the reins, Truman had never even heard of the Manhattan Project!
Even though it had been in effect for OVER 3 YEARS!!
Can you imagine a program today, of such monumental proportions, being conducted and the President doesn't tell the VP about it!!!:eek:
Talk about keeping a tight lid on things!!:D
I just found that rather amazing.
 
HankL,
THANK YOU!!!!:D
I was getting REALLY worried there for a bit.
The bomb casing contains no nuclear material and presents no radiation hazard.
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Like they REALLY have to tell people that!:D

Regarding your bottom quote, I have it pasted up in my den.
After "well preserved body", it reads "Chardonnay in one hand, chocolate in the other" and "YOOHOO!! WHAT A RIDE!!!!".
I concur!

Anyway, thanks for the info!
 
"While perusing the info on the B-29, it states that the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian was closed on May 18th, 1998 and the parts put in storage.
PLEASE!!! Don't tell me this was done for some poitical reasons!!!!"

No.

Only pieces of Enola Gay were on display in DC. The original script for the exhibit caused a HUGE furor with many historians and expecially veterans groups because it pretty clearly blamed the United States for both the start of WW II and for needlessly dropping atomic weapons on a nation that was about to surrender.

In other words, revisionist history that totally discounted Japan's role in horrific atrocities in the Far East almost from the beginning of their empire building phase, which started right after the Russo-Japanese War.

The end result was that the End of WW II celebration had virtually nothing about the dropping of the atomic bomb, just some very direct "This is the plane, this is what it did, this is what happened," type fact recitation.

As with almost all exhibits at the Smithsonian, this one was never intended to be permanent, so Enola Gay was packed up and sent to Virginia to be reassembled at the Smithsonian center there.
 
Thanks Tim!

Interesting reading.
Boy! You've really got to keep an eye on things!:mad:

And where did this idea come from
.."For most Americans," said the script they published in January, "it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."
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I must've been absent the day they taught about the USA trying to invade Japan!!!!!:D
 
The Enola Gay remains on display at the Udvar Hazy center near Dulles Airport.
When it was at the Air & Space in downtown Washington, DC ony portions of the plane were on display.

If you do not want mushroom coulds sprouting in your country, do not attack the United States.
 
"For most Americans," said the script they published in January, "it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."
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And the problem with that statement is?

WildasidefromthefactthatitgetsshoehornedintoatiradeagainstthejustifieduseofthebombAlaska
 
And the problem with that statement is?
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For one thing, it ignores the Second Sino-Japanese War, which started in 1937 when Japan invaded China. An invasion of China seems more a way to expand Japan's influence in Asia and less a way to "defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."

It was the subsequent US support of China, particularly an oil and steel embargo against Japan, that led Japan to attack the US in an effort to control the Pacific and gain access to oil resources in the Dutch East Indies, again in support of Japan's expansionist plans already in progress in Asia.

The statement: "For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism" completely ignores Japan's prior and ongoing aggressions in Asia that eventually led to its conflict with the US.

For another thing, the statement as written is cleverly worded to conjure up PC emotions regarding Japan--defense of culture (as if acting in self-defense against a bully)--and the US--acting in the petty and mean motive of vengeance--in the war while disguising it as merely stating the reasons from the perspectives of the two nations. I'd like to know what the typical Japanese citizen's perspective was regarding the invasion of China in 1937. I doubt it involved "defense" of Japan's "unique culture against Western imperialism." Japan had a superiority complex equal to anything in the West, including Nazi ideology--just ask any Chinese, Vietnamese, or Koreans who dealt with them in WWII.
 
I got to see it when I went to DC in JH. Seeing the Enola Gay was the highlight of my trip. However the fact that it needed so much restoration is a shame, and a glaring indictment against the Smithsonian. While Bock's Car was enshrined in a USAF mueseum, the Enola Gay was left to the elements and vandals. IIRC her props were even sent to a university to power a wind tunnel. Is that anyway to treat a peice of our nations history? In my opinion the USAF should take Enola Gay back and set her next to Bock's Car. At least then she would get the respect she deserves.
 
It was the subsequent US support of China, particularly an oil and steel embargo against Japan, that led Japan to attack the US in an effort to control the Pacific and gain access to oil resources in the Dutch East Indies, again in support of Japan's expansionist plans already in progress in Asia.
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Of course, it was OK for the white man to be expansionist in Asia but not the yellow man.....:D

Try viewing it from their perspective.

WildphillipineshongkongsingaporemalaysiaindochinaAlaska
 
""For most Americans," said the script they published in January, "it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."


That's actually a pretty accurate statement on both faces.

After Pearl Harbor, which was seen to be a violation of the workings of civilized nations, "teaching the Japs a lesson" was a strong thread in American society, far more so than against Germany or Italy.

Collective American rage against Japan in the days after Pearl Harbor were in many ways similar to what we witnessed in the days after 9-11.

The desire to pay the Japanese back, multi-fold, for Pearl Harbor and the string of American defeats in the Pacific in the following months, worked its way into songs, movies, even Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry cartoons.

To the Japanese, though, WW II WAS largely a war of preserving the unique Japanese culture against western imperialism. Starting just after WW I a very strong movement sprang up in Japan -- ultra nationalists who eschewed western ways and who assassinated quite a few politicians who were believed to be either sympathetic to western ways, or who weren't strong enough in resisting the western powers.

The Japanese tried to sell the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as a foil against British and US tariffs during the depression that badly hurt the Japanese economy.

In the 1920s, the London and Washington disarmament treaties were considered to be a national humiliation and a prextext for the western powers to weaken Japan to the point where the British and Americans, with their much larger battle fleets, could divy up the Japanese empire. In fact, rage was so great over the 1920 Washington treaty that at least one Japanese signatory to the treaty was assassinated by one of the ultra nationals groups, IIRC the Japan Sacred Tigers.

A lot of these feelings had been fomenting in Japan since the forced opening in 1853 by American warships. Throughout the Meiji Restoration/Revolution, which saw sweeping changes in Japanese society in an effort to "westernize" the empire there was an ongoing clash of ideals. Some of this is portrayed in the movie "The Last Samurai," (most of the facts are crap, but it rather accurately portrays the angst and division in society at the time).

What can't be discounted, though, and what wasn't mentioned in the Smithsonian's first scripts, is that while the Japanese saw it was a defensive war, they also saw it as a war of vengeance, a means of regaining honor that had been lost throughout the previous nearly 100 years of dealings with the western powers.
 
Of course, it was OK for the white man to be expansionist in Asia but not the yellow man.....
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I don't know who was saying that in this thread. Unless you are saying it's okay for the "yellow man" to be expansionist against other "yellow men."

As for me, I don't think it's okay for one nation to be expansionist against other nations, regardless of the races involved.
Try viewing it from their perspective.
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Try viewing it from the perspective of the people being expanded against. Don't you believe that the victims' perspectives are at least as valid as the perpetrator's, maybe more so?
 
What can't be discounted, though, and what wasn't mentioned in the Smithsonian's first scripts, is that while the Japanese saw it was a defensive war, they also saw it as a war of vengeance, a means of regaining honor that had been lost throughout the previous nearly 100 years of dealings with the western powers.
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Well ... that's pretty much the point I was driving at, though you made it much better and more completely than I did. Each side had more than one motive, and not all the motives were pure, nor were all the motives evil.

I'm not discounting the motives mentioned by the script. I'm disputing the simplistic, PC-tainted manner in which the script tried to boil the War in the Pacific into two lines.
 
Try viewing it from the perspective of the people being expanded against. Don't you believe that the victims' perspectives are at least as valid as the perpetrator's, maybe more so?
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Good. Think then of all the deaths and misery caused by US expansionism. Think then of the fact that the roots of the War in the Pacific was in 1853, not 1941.

On the other hand we are right...because we were the winners

WildtuquoqueAlaska
 
Think then of all the deaths and misery caused by US expansionism. Think then of the fact that the roots of the War in the Pacific was in 1853, not 1941.
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True, very true. And sad. However, it doesn't justify Japan's attrocities against the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese. Are you suggesting that, because of US expansion beginning in 1853, Japan's own attrocities are acceptable or not worthy of mention? So Japan bears no responsibility for its own actions? Or that the sufferings of the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese just prior to WWII should be ignored?
 
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