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Ohio air show scraps Hiroshima bombing re-enactment



A major US air show has canceled plans to stage a re-enactment of the World War II atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima following complaints that it was 'inappropriate.'


Dayton Air Show in Ohio has featured a re-enactment of the bombing of the Japanese city - in August 1945 - for more than 30 years.


Spokeswoman Brenda Kerfoot said a planned 'Great Wall of Fire' pyrotechnic show will still go ahead - but will not be used to represent the bombing after critics said it was inappropriate for a family event.




Grounded: The annual Dayton Air Show (pictured) has canceled plans to stage a re-enactment of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima after critics said it was inappropriate




History: A B-29 bomber has been used annually to represent the 'Enola Gay' that dropped the first nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima in August 1945 (file picture)

Ms Kerfoot said the show at Dayton International Airport in June, will not now feature a B-29 bomber - used to represent the Enola Gay which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

The B-29 plane 'Fifi,' will remain in the show but in a separate role, she said.




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Air show officials said the re-enactment was meant to highlight an historic event that helped end the war and save lives that would have been lost if it had been prolonged.

'We've taken it as more of an educational show,' Ms Kerfoot said. 'The wording that we used probably wasn't the best.'




Terrifying: A mushroom cloud shoots 20,000ft above Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city

She said organisers did not want the Hiroshima aspect to 'become a distraction to the overall quality of the show.'


The Dayton Daily News reported earlier that art curator Gabriela Pickett started an online petition to object to the 'glamorization of destruction.'

'I'm very pleased to hear that they are going to have two different events, and not the re-enacting,' she said. 'It would have been pretty much a celebration of dropping the bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people.'


She said some 200 people signed her online petition in a little more than a day, and that she had received a number of emails from Japanese-Americans who were upset by the re-enactment.


She highlighted Dayton's immigrant-friendly 'Welcome Dayton' initiative. 'We are a city of peace,' she said.

The city has for years highlighted its role as the site of the Dayton peace accords on Bosnia negotiated in 1995. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize each year honors literature's power to promote peace.

Ron Katsuyama, a University of Dayton associate professor who was born in a US wartime detention camp for Japanese-Americans, said the show's contention that the bomb that killed so many Japanese ended up saving more lives is disputable.

He said some historians say Japan would have surrendered without the atomic bomb attacks.



Devastation: Hiroshima following the dropping of the atomic bomb on 6 August 1945. The building in the foreground was retained in its ruined state as a peace memorial

'By having shows like that, it is not only in bad taste, but I think I sustains misinformation,' said Prof Katsuyama, past president of the Asian American Council.


As many as 140,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, with more than 70,000 more killed in an attack three days later on Nagasaki.


In 1994, Bill Clinton's White House pressured the US Postal Service into scrapping a mushroom cloud stamp planned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war's end, following protests by the Japanese government.


A spokeswoman at the Japanese Embassy in Washington said yesterday that it was unaware of the air show issue and had no comment.


The controversy is another setback for the show that dates to 1975 in the city that was home to the aviation-pioneering Wright Brothers.

The air show last month announced that its headline act, the US Air Force's Thunderbirds jet demonstration team, was canceled because of the cuts triggered by the failure to reach a federal budget deal in Washington.

The show normally attracts more than 70,000 people for its displays of vintage planes, aerial acrobatics and stunts. Ms Kerfoot said attendance likely will be lower this year.

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