the morning of August 6, 1945, the quick flight over the Japanese city of Hiroshima was followed by a silent flash that ended the Second World War. At that moment, American military forces carried out what would be the most devastating nuclear attack in all of history. As if the first act wasn't enough, the same terrible maneuver also hit Nagasaki City.
- The nuclear attack that killed thousands more innocent livess
Through the dropping of uranium bombs, the US military forces promoted the mass murder of more than 200,000 thousand innocent lives. Even having slaughtered a good part of the Axis troops, the US government claimed that this maneuver prevented the death of a million soldiers who would participate in the invasion of the islands of the Japanese archipelago. Despite the justification, carrying out such a feat still arouses much controversy among political groups and historians.
- Enola Gay: the plane that dropped the atomic bomb
The most recent one revolves around “enola gay”, the B-29 bomber that directly participated in the two nuclear attacks. After carrying out the macabre task of 1945, Enola served at several US military bases. In the 1980s, it was retired and acquired by the Washington Aerospace Museum, which carried out a long and painstaking process of rebuilding the aircraft. After the costly work, which lasted a decade, he was ready to be exposed to the public.
The first exhibition of the aircraft took place in 1995, when the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki completed exactly fifty years. At that moment, news of the apparition sparked a heated discussion about what meaning Enola Gay would have in assuming the post of World War II heritage site. For pacifist groups, the plane named after the mother of pilot Paul Tibbets should serve as a warning about terrible mistakes made in the past.
Not by chance, these same pacifists asked that Enola Gay's exhibition be accompanied by a series of photos showing the devastating effects of the atomic bomb. The exhibition's curators, however, discarded this critical link to the aircraft's exhibition and preferred to avoid any clearer position on the subject. No doubt this silence ignores the regrettable fact that the destruction of human life cannot be allowed under any circumstances.
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Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SOUSA, Rainer Gonçalves. "Enola, the Controversial Airplane"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/guerras/enola-aviao-polemico.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.