Meanwhile, yesterday, one day ahead of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan's Defence Minister Gen Nakatani sparked a new row over controversial security legislation when he said the Bills would not rule out the military transporting the nuclear weapons of foreign forces.īut he added that such a development was in reality impossible because of Japan's long-standing policy of not possessing or producing nuclear arms and not letting others bring them into the country.įoreign Minister Fumio Kishida, whose election district is in Hiroshima prefecture, joined Mr Nakatani in denying the possibility. The Smithsonian reworked its planned exhibition - The Crossroads: The End Of World War II, The Atomic Bomb And The Cold War - at least five times, before it opened in 1995 for a two-year run that drew four million visitors.īy then, the exhibition had been stripped down to a straightforward recounting of the Enola Gay and its historic mission, minus any discussion of the merits or morality of the use of atomic weapons. 6, 1982, also said that he had no regrets about the bombing because the United States was at war and that he would do it again under. Veterans and their supporters in Congress alleged that a 50th anniversary exhibition depicted the wartime Japanese "more as victims, not aggressors", wrote Mr John Correll of the Air Force Association. Enola Gay pilot Tibbets, looking back on his actions on Aug. Admission is 7 for adults children 5-12, 4 and children younger than 5, free. Twenty years ago, during its restoration, Enola Gay found itself at the centre of a firestorm between World War II veterans and a younger generation of historians who questioned the use of "The Bomb". Tibbets will speak again today at the Weeks Air Museum, 14710 SW 128th St., at 1 p.m. Eatherly is standing in the center of the. He died on November 1, 2007, at his home in Columbus, Ohio, at 92. The B-29 Superfortress crew that flew over Japan and radioed that the weather appeared clear before the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. Paul Tibbets was the pilot of B-29 bomber Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. "On Aug 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan," its plaque simply notes, with no mention of the death or destruction it sowed. The Enola Gay was a bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line.