I am surprised, angry and sad that it is on display.'
Terumi Tanaka, who was 13 when the atomic bomb fell on his city, killing five of his family members, sees the plane differently: 'To the survivors, it is a symbol of evil in the world. John Dailey, the director of the museum, recently described the B-29 Superfortress as a 'magnificent technological achievement,' one of the crown jewels in a vast space that contains some of aviation's most notable craft. The unveiling of the Enola Gay and its presentation are touching off a debate about how a museum deals with the pride and pain surrounding one of history's great turning points: President Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Nor is there mention of the claims that the bombing was necessary to force Japan's surrender or of the wider controversy about using weapons that could destroy humanity. The unmistakable icon of the nuclear age, the fully restored Enola Gay goes on public display for the first time today in the Smithsonian's new, cavernous Air and Space Museum in suburban Virginia.īut there is no mention of the 140,000 people killed by that bombing. 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan.' The two paragraphs of text compress its momentous impact on the world to one spare sentence:
WASHINGTON - The Enola Gay, the simple plaque tells us, was the most sophisticated bomber of World War II.
