This also tells us that the narrator is telling this story of how he regrets the dropping of the bomb, straight after it he knows the actual effects, only the day after. 'Enola Gay' was the name of the plane that dropped the bomb.įrom the start we know the narrator disagrees with the bomb dropped because he says 'Enola Gay, you should have stayed at home yesterday' and should'nt have gone out on the mission. Its about the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hirosima, Japan by America in 1945 and the wrongness of it. Song MeaningIt is well known what this song means. But the disconsolate lyrics and eerie tune of "Enola Gay" still evoke the anxiety, fear, and determination of that strange era.
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Many people living at the time truly believed that the Cold War would still be going on long after they were no longer alive - if the world was not destroyed first - yet because of "Enola Gay" and many other forms of popular expression that reminded people of these issues and gave them a way to articulate their fears (and hopes), popular movements around the world eventually forced a change of heart by political leaders.īy the early 1990s, America has begun extensive nuclear disarmament and Soviet Russia had completely collapsed. (The melancholy, bittersweet yet strangely kicky tune of the original song also expresses that feeling - for young people at the time a song that they could dance to in the shadow of their own impending destruction seemed perfectly appropriate.) In many places throughout popular culture, not just song lyrics,īut in saying, "It shouldn't ever have to end this way," the song is also making a tacit plea to change the direction of world events, challenging just a tiny bit the idea that nuclear destruction was completely inevitable. The motif of the clock stopped at 8:15, the indelible kiss (of the heat flash from the bomb blast), and the call of "conditions normal," all reference that sense of history frozen on the precipice of armageddon.
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The song looks back almost wistfully to the point in history when that state of existence was brought into being. The song is even more specific - it is about living in the 1980s under the shadow of Cold War fears of atomic war and nuclear annihilation, which many people at the time viewed as inevitable given the way world events seemed to be going. The other posters who point out the obvious reference to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima ("Little Boy"), and the evocation of the imagery of a mother and her child as an ironic metaphor for the relationship between the bomber and the bomb, are all correct. Yet the same controversy flares anew briefly in 2003 when the plane is moved to a permanent home in the new National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport.General CommentThe Cold War was the subject of many 80s synthpop songs, among which "Enola Gay" is one of the best known. The controversy over how the Enola Gay should represent history gradually becomes history itself. Retrospects and reflections on the controversy following the opening of the new exhibit. In the period before the new exhibit opens, the group of historians calls for national teach-ins in protest, Smithsonian damage control includes a conference on museums in a democratic society at the University of Michigan, and Martin Harwit resigns just before two days of hearings begin in the Senate. Organized opposition, now public - including the American Legion, members of Congress, and World War II veterans of all stripes - to the direction of the Smithsonian exhibit mounts, forcing several more drafts, none of which satisfies the critics.Ī group of historians vigorously defend the museum, but a dispute over the number of lives saved by dropping the bomb dooms negotiations for an exhibit acceptable to the critics, and new Smithsonian Secretary Michael Heyman admits the museum made a mistake, cancels the exhibit, and plans a new, uncontroversial one.
![where is the enola gay now where is the enola gay now](https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/EnolaGay/Enola20_761c20.jpg)
![where is the enola gay now where is the enola gay now](https://cdn.britannica.com/83/22983-138-ADD07B68/Japan-Hiroshima-B-29-Superfortress-Enola-Gay-dropping-August-6-1945.jpg)
The Smithsonian proposal to mark this important anniversary as a "crossroads" - consonant with a new Smithsonian philosophy of museumship by Secretary Robert McCormick Adams and NASM Director Martin Harwit - is unsuccessfully questioned privately by the Air Force Association, led by John T. Experience the evolution of the Enola Gay controversy by reading through a chronological list of documents divided into five rounds: The exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II featuring the refurbished B-29 Enola Gay proposed by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum resulted in fierce controversy over how history should represent dropping an atom bomb on Japan.