Does the US justify the 1945 Hiroshima bombing?
American historians demand that a stand with a detailed description of the Hiroshima bombing consequences must be fixed next to one of the National Air and Space Museum exhibits, the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay that atom-bombed Japan's Hiroshima in August 1945, UPI reports. The museum exposition presents the bomber as the most high-tech aircraft of its epoch. The museum specification of the exhibit gives the aircraft's performance characteristics. However, it does not mention how many people were killed during the most tragic raid in the history.
Museum guides also omit the contradictory events of the US history and only enumerate the performance characteristics of the aircraft.
A group of historians, WWII veterans, students and activists of human rights organizations numbering about 350 people, headed by History Professor Peter Kuznick from the American University organized the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History & Current Policy.
The Committee wants to make the Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, supplement the story about the bomber with documented materials including pictures of the damages it caused during the raid.
As is known, over 140,000 people were immediately killed as a result of the Little Boy A-bomb explosion, thousands of people died later because of radiation sickness.
What is more, historians say that as far as Enola Gay is defined as a B-29 bomber but not as the aircraft that bombed Hiroshima, it is necessary to mention the doings of its twin, Bockscar. That was the name of the B-29 that bombed Japan's Nagasaki in a week after the Hiroshima bombing. The bombing killed over 70,000 people.
Members of the group signed a letter to the Museum direction to state their attitude to the problem and demand adequate changes to the exposition and excursions of the Museum. The group members say "this so much impressive exhibition justifies what has been done in 1945 and supports the Bush Administration nuclear program."
The B-29 crew commander Paul W. Tibbets Jr called the bomber Enola Gay after his mother. The aircraft has flown less than 200 hours while planes of this class (the total number of these aircrafts built in the US during the war made up over 4,000) spent thousands of hours in action.
The B-29 was restored in 2001 and exhibited in the aviation branch of the Smithsonian Institution.
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