While it did not drop the bomb on Nagasaki, the Enola Gay did take flight to get data on the weather in the lead-up to the second strike on Japan.Īfter the war, the airplane took flight a few more times.
dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. The plane returned to Tinian Island, from which it had come. Shortly after that, the first shock wave hit us, and the plane snapped all over.” All we saw in the airplane was a bright flash. on the turn and ran away as fast as we could. “Immediately took the airplane to a 180° turn. When the bomb left the airplane, the plane jumped because you released 10,000 lbs.,” Theodore Van Kirk, the plane’s navigator, later recalled. “It was just like any other mission: some people are reading books, some are taking naps. I wonder how he will be remembered 20 or 50 years.The Enola Gay is a B-29 Superfortress, which pilot Paul Tibbets named after his mother, and which had been stripped of everything but the necessities, so as to be thousands of pounds lighter than an ordinary plane of that make.
Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1997.Ī very unrelated side note: Repeatedly seeing the word “memory” triggered the word “remember” in my mind, which made me think of this song by an American icon. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. “History at Risk: The Case of the Enola Gay.” In History Wars: the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, edited by Edward T. “Whose History is it Anyway? Memory, Politics, and Historical Scholarship.” In History Wars: the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, edited by Edward T. This post reflects on the following readings: In thinking about the circumstances and results of the Enola Gay exhibit and Vietnam Memorial, I end by asking, “How do we and can we as public historians have a role in forming or reflecting cultural/collective memory?” The reactions and interactions of the exhibit and memorial with the public made me think about the differences between both generations and their views of America as a country, society, and people and how these differences may affect how they choose to remember their respective controversy.
Enola gay exhibit controversy plus#
The Vietnam Memorial also produced anger yet it provided an outlet for healing in keeping the original design plus additional statues included as a comprise in interpretation. In some ways the Memorial’s design forced Vietnam veterans and the community to confront elements of the war’s controversy some would rather forget.Įven though the exhibit and the memorial met controversy, I find it intriguing how the aftermath of the Enola Gay exhibit mostly consisted of anger and significantly reduced the scope the Smithsonian’s work. The critical analysis of the decision to drop the atomic bomb in the proposed Enola Gay exhibit smeared the memory of the event for veterans in a negative way by challenging them to ask themselves, “Did America take the correct course of action to end the war?” Similarly, Sturken’s analysis of the Vietnam Memorial’s design interpretation and its comparison to other war monuments on page 52 also echoes the question if America made the right decisions in the war.
Enola gay exhibit controversy how to#
Both cases demonstrate how war veterans, and the community, struggled with the decision of how to remember controversial actions in our nation’s history. In reading Marita Sturken’s discussion about the controversy of the Vietnam Memorial design in Tangled Memories, I could not help but think back to the uproar of the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit in the assigned readings a few weeks ago.