Middleboro Review 2: NUCLEAR WARFARE

Showing posts with label NUCLEAR WARFARE. Show all posts

Sunday, August 6, 2023

It's time for the Enola Gay exhibit to confront the Hiroshima reality

“The people aboard the Enola Gay dropped the bomb from a great height, so they couldn’t see the people going about their lives below. If they could have seen people’s faces, I wonder if they could have gone through with it.”
— Shintaro Fukuhara, organizer of bicycle tours of A-bomb sites.

An artifact of profound significance sits as part of an incredible display of history at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum — the Enola Gay.

But this Boeing B-29 Superfortress is not just an exhibit; it's key to one of the most devastating events in human history: the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

For too long, the portrayal of the Enola Gay has focused on its technological prowess and its place in aviation history. But there's a crucial chapter missing from this narrative — the immediate aftermath of its mission and the tens of thousands of lives lost. With that in mind, it’s clear that the National Air and Space Museum's exhibit on the Enola Gay is glaringly incomplete.

Museums aren't just there for awe, but for context. This omission is unacceptable, especially when more than a million people visited the exhibit last year alone. That's a million opportunities for education and understanding missed.

Today is the 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, so people are paying extra attention to it — which gives us a unique moment to press for change. Sign the petition to Lonnie G. Bunch, Secretary of the Smithsonian, and tell him: It’s time to reckon with the past. The Enola Gay exhibit must mention the casualties at Hiroshima.

Even though it’s been nearly eight decades, the exact casualty count from the Hiroshima bombing remains elusive, with estimates ranging between 70,000 and 140,000 lives lost. These numbers should be etched into our collective consciousness as stark reminders of the devastation that nuclear warfare brings.

Yet, we still find ourselves confronted with a sanitized narrative, one that chooses not to illuminate the reality of the atomic bombings’ widespread devastation, unimaginable human suffering, and long-term environmental and health effects caused.

We must acknowledge the death and devastation that ensued when the U.S., the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in conflict, dropped the bomb. The U.S. cannot shy away from this aspect of its history, and we must do justice to the magnitude of the event in our public exhibitions. It is a moral obligation, not just to people in the U.S., but to our shared humanity.

Tell Lonnie G. Bunch that it’s time to reckon with the past and acknowledge the victims of Hiroshima

Thank you for working for peace,
Stephen, Sara, Faith and the Win Without War team

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Tuesday, September 8, 2020

After 4 decades of Plowshares actions, its nuclear warfare that should be on trial — not activists

TomDispatch

Waging Nonviolence on the 40th anniversary of the trial of the Plowshares Eight.
—Erika

“Nuclear warfare is not on trial here, you are!” said Judge Samuel Salus, in exasperation.

Before him were eight activists, including two priests and a nun. As Judge Salus tried to preside over the government’s prosecution of them for their trespass onto — and destruction of — private property, the eight were trying to put nuclear warfare, nuclear weapons, nuclear policy and U.S. exceptionalism on trial.

That was 40 years ago this week — ancient history by some measures. And no one reading this will be surprised to find that the eight were found guilty and the human family is still threatened by almost 15,000 nuclear warheads. So, four decades later, why isn’t nuclear warfare on trial?

They are the crime responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians 75 years ago. They have littered the landscape with radioactive waste. They have cost the United States more than $5 trillion from the public coffers. They are the apocalyptic nightmare on hair-trigger alert that haunt our children’s dreams.

On September 9, 1980, my father, Philip Berrigan, along with his brother Daniel, John Schuchardt, Dean Hammer, Elmer Maas, Molly Rush, Sister Anne Montgomery, and Father Carl Kabat, gained entry into the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Once inside the complex, they poured blood over two nuclear weapons’ nose cones, and used household hammers to dent the metal. They came to be known as The Plowshares Eight. They were motivated by the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures who enjoined that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

As we mark this 40th anniversary in a strange and fearful time of pandemic, white violence, political instability and economic insecurity, it is heartening and instructive to reflect back on the origins of the Plowshares movement. It was largely white, largely Catholic and relatively small. Their purpose was to take personal responsibility for nuclear weapons — these implements of mass destruction shrouded in almost mystical secrecy and reverence — and label them improper property, converting, transforming, exposing and ultimately abolishing them. Plowshares activists don’t just hold these views or espouse these beliefs. They conspire. They pray. They act through nonviolent means.