The most tasteless and insensitive museum exhibit ever.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
How so, Agathon?
There are memorial museums for holocaust victims and all else.
What about the U.S.S. Arizona?

Those are fine by me, in fact they are the best sort of war museums.

This is different: the aircraft is on display and there is only mentioned that it bombed Hiroshima. No mention of the victims, no mention of the horror of nuclear weapons, nothing.

You can see why they'd be peeved.

[David Floyd]

This is different: the aircraft is on display and there is only mentioned that it bombed Hiroshima. No mention of the victims, no mention of the horror of nuclear weapons, nothing.

What, you mean someone is actually trying to separate history from emotional appeals and value judgements?

Good!

[Boris Godunov]

The Enola Gay isn't a nuclear weapon, it's a plane.

[Kropotkin]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
i have a problem with people pretending that japan's rape of nanjing or its brutal occupation of korea somehow makes the civilians blameless, when the country was totally militarized and the civilians themselves were complicit in the behavior of the military.

So, a supporter of the concept of collective guilt. How interesting, another thing that ought be be put in a museum.

[Q Classic]

So, a supporter of the concept of collective guilt. How interesting, another thing that ought be be put in a museum.

when the japanese stop pretending to be the sole victims of what happened in the first half of the century, maybe i'll change my tune.

[Kropotkin]

And what exactly does that have to do with a couple of a-bomb survivors protesting against an exhibition and being accused for things they had little, if anything, to do with by a number of ignorant bastards??

[Boris Godunov]

Q, If you're okay being on that level, that's up to you, but I think it's sad.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

with all due respect im not sure everyone agrees with that statement.

Hiroshima in fact killed fewer people than the firebombing of Tokyo. There was a gradual coarsening of attitude toward civilian deaths on the part of the allies, that started in august 1939. The notion of setting apart Hiroshima is largely due to 2 facts
1. The later construction of larger nuclear weapons capable of destroying all human life - something not entirely foreseeable in 1945.

That is what makes it the supreme horror. There isn't really very much good that can be said about nuclear annihilation. Wars were plenty bad up until then, but this is the first time that it became clear that the whole planet could go up in smoke and that it would all be over.

As Oppenheimer said, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." That should stand as the single most important quotation of the 20th century.

2. The fact that making Hiroshima, rather than Auschwitz, or the Gulag, the supreme horror of the modern age fitted well with the ideological agendas of certain people during the cold war.

Those were terrible things, but really not that new in human history. Genghis Khan ravaged his way across a continent and put whole cities to the sword. That's awful stuff, but it's less awful than a weapon which will decimate all life and poison the very substance of the world.

I don't object to war museums, I enjoy visiting them. Anyone who likes doing so would find me an enthusiastic companion. However, I think that such a powerfully symbolic aircraft, one that means so much to people for all sorts of horrible reasons, should be the centre of an exhibit that speaks to the terrible suffering and death caused by, and frankly the utter immorality of, nuclear weapons.

There was nothing glorious about that mission. It represents a profound failure of reason on all sides. I don't blame Tibbets and the others who were just doing their job, and I'm not sure I even blame Truman, even though I am not convinced of the military value of the bombing. We should all look at Hiroshima as one place where, for one reason or another, things truly went to ****.

Every one of us should do everything within our power to prevent something like Hiroshima ever happening again. If it takes showing people pictures of charred bodies, that is a small price to pay. This has nothing to do with being on the left or on the right, you have to be alive or not croaking from radiation poisoning for that to matter.

[Agathon]

And another thing. If you say that using nuclear weapons on people is a mere value judgement that has no place in history, then what's the point of history other than being "pretty". If we don't use it to understand our mistakes and illuminate our sense of what really matters and our sense of human folly, then I see no point in it.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Agathon
And another thing. If you say that using nuclear weapons on people is a mere value judgement that has no place in history, then what's the point of history other than being "pretty". If we don't use it to understand our mistakes and illuminate our sense of what really matters and our sense of human folly, then I see no point in it.

I agree that a debate on values about hiroshima is appropriate. I dont think merely citing the casualty figures does that, and i dont know that Air and Space is the place for a full discussion of nuclear war, etc.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Agathon



Those were terrible things, but really not that new in human history. Genghis Khan ravaged his way across a continent and put whole cities to the sword. That's awful stuff, but it's less awful than a weapon which will decimate all life and poison the very substance of the world.

In fact there is a large school of thought that says that for quite a number of reason the holocaust was a Novum in history and not simply an extension of historical atrocities. However this is not the place for that discussion.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

I agree that a debate on values about hiroshima is appropriate. I dont think merely citing the casualty figures does that, and i dont know that Air and Space is the place for a full discussion of nuclear war, etc.

If they'd put some other B-29 there it wouldn't have been an issue.

Or better still, a Northrop P-61 "Black Widow" - one of the coolest planes ever made.


I'm sorry I ranted. I really hate nuclear weapons. Been reading too much Bertrand Russell I think.

[Q Classic]

And what exactly does that have to do with a couple of a-bomb survivors protesting against an exhibition and being accused for things they had little, if anything, to do with by a number of ignorant bastards??

it doesn't. that was a response to a different question posed above.

Q, If you're okay being on that level, that's up to you, but I think it's sad.

i don't have any ill will towards the japanese. i just refuse to humor them when they act like they were the only ones hurt by the war.

am i opposed to nuclear weapons? yes. do i think that what happened in those two cities should never be done again? of course. should i for some reason hold those victims up above others who suffered and died during the same time period simply because they weren't vaporized in an atomic flash?

[Sarxis]

From the article:

"We would not mind the plane going on display if they showed the tragedy they caused," said Ms Tomonaga, a Red Cross nurse at the time of the bombing.

Don't they mean the tragedy prevented? Stopping Japan from commiting Seppuku on the sword of the inevitable US invasion?

Even after the two bombs were dropped, there was an attempted coup by some of Japan's military to continue the war.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
From the article:


Don't they mean the tragedy prevented? Stopping Japan from commiting Seppuku on the sword of the inevitable US invasion?

Even after the two bombs were dropped, there was an attempted coup by some of Japan's military to continue the war.

This is debatable. Japan was finished long before the bombings.