There is quite a flap going on with the aviation community, over the way the NATIONAL AIR & SPACE Museum of the SMITHSONIAN Institute plans to display the ENOLA GAY; the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The planned display will show the American forces in a rather unflattering light, while referring to the KAMIKAZE pilots as ‘valiant defenders of their homeland’ etc. Well, that’s probably true, but war is war and it is a terrible thing on all sides and for a National Museum of any country to portray their own fighting men in a negative light is just plain wrong! Why can’t they show American heroes?

The rationalization of the Museum is to say that, what we learned, that the atomic bomb was necessary to hasten the surrender and to save hundreds of thousands of lives, American AND Japanese is incorrect - the Museum is now saying that the Japanese people were really trying to surrender. We say BS!

Here is the text of a card I recently received from YOYA KAWAMURA (1739-LIFE-1991) and he answers this question.

“To ask whether the Japanese people wanted to surrender or wanted to fight to the death is totally irrelevant because, at that time, Japan was not a democratic country and the people had absolutely no say in that matter. In addition, we knew little about the true nature of the atomic bomb. There was a short, simple communiqué that said that a special bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and there was considerable damage. It did not affect our morale very much. The Soviets’ declaration of war shocked us much more.”

Many thanks for this memory of a difficult time, YOYA and we hope it serves to answer the question whether the Japanese people were ready and wanting to surrender, as the Museum says. It seems from YOYA’s memories, that the Museum has their facts a bit twisted, doesn’t it?