"If the Enola Gay is going to be displayed, they should also be displaying what exactly happened beneath that plane on the day that it dropped the bomb," said Sunao Tsuboi. When the display was unveiled in 2003, Sunao Tsuboi was one of the Japanese survivors who protested. Like other aircraft in the museum, a small label lists technical details about the plane.Ī single sentence describes its fateful mission, "On August 6th, 1945, this Martin-built B-29 dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."įor some survivors of the blast, the brief description is insufficient. The gleaming silver bomber named after the mother of its pilot now sits among more than 100 foreign and American planes in a vast converted aircraft hangar in northern Virginia.
In recent years, the Enola Gay has been fully restored and put on display. The devastating blast became one of the most significant events of the 20th century, with a controversy that continues sixty years later. On the morning of August 6th, 1945, a specialized B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.