Six survivors and about 50 peace activists held up pictures of hideously burnt victims among the tens of thousands killed or injured by the blast, as the restored and shiny silver Boeing B-29 Superfortress loomed overhead.
The Enola Gay was put on display for the first time in one piece on opening day for a vast new annex to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, which also includes a just retired French Concorde and space shuttle prototype.
One protestor threw a bag of paint at the aircraft, and was hauled away by police, though activists could not identify the man.
It was not clear if the Enola Gay was damaged.
The vigil stirred anger among some visitors to the museum, just under the flightpath of Dulles international airport outside Washington.
"Remember Pearl Harbor" "Go home" "What about the Nanjing massacre?" several men shouted in references to the imperial Japanese army, as several scuffles broke out with activists.
Survivors are disappointed the plane is being displayed with no reference to casualty figures at Hiroshima, which some estimates say reach 230 000 people, when those who died in later years of radiation poisoning are included.
The Enola Gay bears a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II."
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll from the Hiroshima bombings included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he said.
"From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
This is going to sound cold, but if using that bomb saved even one US soldier, then I don't give a rat's ass how many of the enemy died to save that soldier's life.
In other words the Japanese brought it on themselves.
And the peace protesters can kiss my ass.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."- General Sir Charles Napier
WHAT? On the first fucking day of the new A&S museum annex?
Fucking KILL THEM NOW!
Give me some time with them and carte blanche and a rubber truncheon
and I'll make 'em regret the error of their ways.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
The police should have dragged them outside, beaten to near the point death and then asked very kindly if they'd appreciate that happening every day for several years?
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
Montcalm wrote:What do they think vandalising an old aircraft will accomplish
[sarcasm] Ahh, but you have to understand, doing this will magically make eveything right, just because they can say that America killed a couple of hundred thousand people to stop millions more dying, when what they should of done was not retaliated after Pearl Harbour, and invited the Japanese dance round a fire and smoke a peace pipe, all of which the Japanese will accpet totally of course, and no one would ever fire a gun again and there would be world peace for ever more [/sarcasm]
Montcalm wrote:What do they think vandalising an old aircraft will accomplish
Publicity?
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"Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknown, everything is obvious." ZORAC GALE Force Euro Wimp Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
Glocksman wrote:This is going to sound cold, but if using that bomb saved even one US soldier, then I don't give a rat's ass how many of the enemy died to save that soldier's life.
Fucking brilliant. Using this line of reasoning ANYTHING can be done to keep your soldiers alive at the expense of everyone else. We didn't drop the bomb to save just one soldiers life. We dropped the bomb to save more US soldiers lives AND tens of millions of Japanesse citizens lives.
In other words the Japanese brought it on themselves.
And the peace protesters can kiss my ass.
So because of the tyranny of the Japanese military and its total control over the information the people viewed (which made them dislike the US) justifies killing Japanese citizens wholescale just to save one US soldiers life?
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
Montcalm wrote:What do they think vandalising an old aircraft will accomplish
Publicity?
I'd agree, but it's the bad publicity. Considering that there were plenty of legal, non-destructive ways to express their anger, I say they'd deserve it.
I say we send "activists" to Japan to stand outside war monuments shouting slogans about Japanese atrocities and throwing bags filled with paint. Good lord..
We can argue about the numbers, 230k to a potential 1million.?
We can argue that it was an enemy state?
We can argue what the Japanese did to their captured countries?
We can argue HOW many women disappeared over the night?
Is it better to kill that number all in one swoop to end the war, or to rape and kill women and children that'll exceed that number?
So yes, the bomb is a horrible horrible thing and we could probably sleep a lot easier at night if it was never invented. But the Japanese have done things that those two bombs could never add up to.
That guy is lucky he didn't connect with that paint bag. You don't get probation for vandalizing Smithsonian exhibits.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
God knows I would not want to be the person who had to tell someone their son was dead because we wanted to save the lives of the enemy who'd been fighting us viciously for years.
A sub at my hs was going to be part of the second wave to attack Japan (the one that would have went in after the beachhead had been established). He was totally in favor of the bomb, and quotes much higher figurees for invasion casualties.
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StormTrooperTR889 wrote:A sub at my hs was going to be part of the second wave to attack Japan (the one that would have went in after the beachhead had been established). He was totally in favor of the bomb, and quotes much higher figurees for invasion casualties.
You have an 80 some year old subby?
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he said.
Hmph, and should be just as so.~Jason
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
I'm sure the protestors would love to hear the stories from my Japanese grandma about how crazy people were getting at the end of the war. She and many other people was getting training in making and using bamboo spears for fighting to the bitter bloody futile end. The A-bombs were horrific I admit but in the end they saved millions of lives, American AND Japanese.
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God knows I would not want to be the person who had to tell someone their son was dead because we wanted to save the lives of the enemy who'd been fighting us viciously for years.
So is a US Soldier worth a thousand brainwashed citizens who don't know any better? Where is our moral superiority when were willing to slaughter citizens rather then try alternate methods?
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
God knows I would not want to be the person who had to tell someone their son was dead because we wanted to save the lives of the enemy who'd been fighting us viciously for years.
So is a US Soldier worth a thousand brainwashed citizens who don't know any better? Where is our moral superiority when were willing to slaughter citizens rather then try alternate methods?
There's a huge difference between a culture that enshrined racism and militaristic nationalism (who would indeed be responsible for their actions) and being a brain washed puppet (less then fully responsible). The Japanese were certainly the former rather than the latter. And either way it makes them no less dangerous.
What alternate methods? Blockade Japan into submission? That would have been far, far worse on the civilian population let alone the genuine innocents in mainland Asia. Invasion? That would have been far bloodier than the A-bombs. That leaves what exactly for alternatives?
Stormbringer wrote:
There's a huge difference between a culture that enshrined racism and militaristic nationalism (who would indeed be responsible for their actions) and being a brain washed puppet (less then fully responsible). The Japanese were certainly the former rather than the latter. And either way it makes them no less dangerous.
What alternate methods? Blockade Japan into submission? That would have been far, far worse on the civilian population let alone the genuine innocents in mainland Asia. Invasion? That would have been far bloodier than the A-bombs. That leaves what exactly for alternatives?
I think Alyeska was more reacting to Glockman's barbaric comment (hopefully made in jest ...) rather than the bombing itself (see his comment about Japanese citizens).
Glocksman wrote:This is going to sound cold, but if using that bomb saved even one US soldier, then I don't give a rat's ass how many of the enemy died to save that soldier's life.
It's attitudes like yours which caused that war in the first place. Once you decide that a human population can be rendered undeserving of human sympathy by the actions of its leaders, you have made all of the downward progress necessary.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
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Vympel wrote:I think Alyeska was more reacting to Glockman's barbaric comment (hopefully made in jest ...) rather than the bombing itself (see his comment about Japanese citizens).
I hope it was in jest, too, because such an attitude is absolutely disgusting and reeks of jingonistic apathy.
The life of a civilian is ALWAYS more important than the life of a soldier...
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