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The initial exhibit was controversial, with veterans groups claiming that the revisionist historical attitude was omitting the truth behind the reason to drop the atomic bomb and sympathizing too much with the Japanese. In 1995, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) created an exhibit to feature the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. During this period, he was a leading member of the Committee for the Restoration and Proper Display of the Enola Gay (CRPDEG).
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After the war, Bennett had a long career in the concrete contractor business in the greater Chicago, Illinois area. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor and was discharged in October, 1945.ĭuring his years of service, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. He was a member of the 40th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) of the XX Bomber Command in the China/Burma/India (CBI) Theater of Operations as well as Tinian in the Mariana Islands of the Central Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. He flew combat missions in B-29’s as a radar operator and combat aerial photographer. Burr Bennett had a life-long interest in the Enola Gay Controversy as a result of his military service.
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Within days the Japanese officially surrendered and World War II ended, although debate has raged ever since over whether the act hastened the war's end and saved thousands of lives or was one of the world's worst war crimes.W. Three days after the 1945 Hiroshima bombing, the US dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. The Enola Gay has proved contentious for the museum before, when in 1995 portions of its fuselage, undercarriage and engines went on display as part of an exhibition about the atomic bomb, leading to protests. The museum has spent months restoring the B-29 bomber for display in a giant hangar at its Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, near Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. "When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger," he said. "The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high "This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometres (miles) from the epicentre of the blast, and still bears scars. The text accompanying the plane talks about its technological prowess and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe". "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects." "We don't do it for other airplanes," he told French agency AFP. However the museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted calls for the death toll to be included.
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Thomas K Siemer, 73, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged with felony destruction of property and loitering, while Gregory Wright of Hagerstown, Maryland, faced a misdemeanour loitering charge.Ī panel of the Enola Gay was dented in the fracas. Survivors of the bombing are angry that the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is not displaying casualty figures from the US-led attack.Ībout 140,000 Japanese died in the bombing itself, and many others later.Īround six survivors and 50 peace activists visited the new annex to the museum, some holding pictures of burned victims of the blast. Two men were arrested after red paint symbolising blood was thrown at the Enola Gay, a World War II B-29 bomber. Protests have interrupted the opening of a new US museum display which includes the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Protesters said the exhibit should have included casualty figures