We want to encourage a balanced discussion of what happened in 1945 and the potential ramifications of what happened in the past for policy today. We don't want a whitewashed exhibition. That kind of display only helps to legitimize the past use of nuclear weapons and, I fear, lends support for lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons now.
Howard Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and dozens of other people say a Smithsonian display of the Enola Gay
should include information about the number of Japanese people it killed.
Comments
The Enola Gay is a metaphor for the tipping point of civilization as the point in time when humans demonstrated the ability to create a weapon that could end civilization. Arguments of the necessity to drop the atomic bomb continue to abate the issue of the victims of nuclear weapons, different than victims of any other weapon created by man. Until that fate is acknowledged, the description of the impact of the Enola Gay on Hiroshima, and the world, is misguided.
Posted by: Dick Moody | November 29, 2003 1:51 AM