About Hidankyo

HOME >> About Hidankyo >> News letter >> Monthly paper "Hidankyo" November 2003

Monthly paper "Hidankyo" November 2003

Against "Restoration of the Enola Gay", petition began.

    Hidankyo has sent a letter of request to the US president George Bush and the director of the Smithonian Air and Space Museum, John Dailey, concerning the exhibit of a restoration of the Enola Gay. Petition was also begun to gather support to this request. The petition is collected both in US and Japan, and it will be submitted by Japanese A-bomb victims at the exhibit opening planned in December.

The Smithonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. is "the most visited museum in the world". The exhibit of the restoration of the Enola Gay will be open to the general public at the new pavilion near the Dulles Airport on December 15th.

The explanatory text for the public display devotes a great deal to the performance characteristics and the like of the Enola Gay, but is said to restrict itself to a brief reference to the dropping of the atomic bomb: "Dropped the first atomic weapon on Hiroshima in 1945." Moreover, we have heard that Director Dailey has explained: "This is a museum of technology, and we have focused on the technological achievement."

The museum attempted a special exhibition on the Enola Gay in 1995. Then, the museum planned to display the impacts of the atomic bomb based on its statement that the bombing was a right action taken. Nevertheless, the exhibit was cancelled by a strong opposition from the American Air Force Association.

In the letter of request, Hidankyo states that "from the perspective of those who are aware of this background, the fact that you are on this occasion conducting an exhibition of the Enola Gay on the pretext of focusing on ‘technological achievement,’ with concealment of the ‘calamity of the bombing,’ can only be considered to signify that your museum has adopted the position that ‘the dropping of the atomic bomb was right’." Furthermore, Hidankyo claims that "a testimony to ‘technological achievement’ is completely unacceptable to the atomic bomb victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

The petition for the request to the president Bush and the director Daily already started in Japan. With the cooperation of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee in Washington D.C., the petition has been translated in English and began collecting signatures at a public gathering of 100,000 people in Washington on October 25th.

Demonstration for the request will be held with the participation of the A-bomb survivors at the public opening of the exhibit in December. The petitions collected throughout Japan will be gathered by Hidankyo and passed onto the A-bomb survivors participating in the demonstration at the museum.

All sorts of bomb-victim associations and groups in Japan have expressed their opposition to the announcement of the exhibit made in August, and they sent in request letters to the president Bush. The request letters addressed to the museum director, as well as their petitions, will be delivered by the victim participants who are flying to US for the demonstration.

Bush’s visit to Japan brought demonstrations at embassies and on the street

On October 17th, Hidankyo and Toyukai (Tokyo Federation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) requested of the president Bush, who was visiting Japan, to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to personally witness the truth of the damages brought by the A-bomb bombings.

The demonstration for the request took place in front of the American Embassy in Tokyo. Participating bomb victims publicly asked for an apology for the bombing as well as the cancellation of the development of nuclear weapons and also called for disarmament of nuclear weapons.

The demonstration was continued at Shibuya Station. The demonstration also collected petitions for the request letter written for the Enola Gay exhibit upcoming in December. There were two demonstrators, one with a mask of the president Bush and another in a mask of the prime minister Koizumi, to express Bush with his full intent to use nuclear weapon and develop it further and Koizumi with his favour to Bush’s intent.

There were young participants from other groups at Shibuya, collecting signatures from the same generation.

At Shibuya, there were foreigners who paid attention to the demonstration and stopped to look at the displays from the "The A-bomb and Humanity" photo panels.

40 people, including the bomb victims from the greater Tokyo area participated in the demonstration. 28 petitions were collected in total.

Back numbers