US newspaper claims Hiroshima bombing caused by ‘homosexual’ plane
Mourners have gathered in Japan to mark the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb drop. However, one US publication has made a rather bizarre claim.
Thousands gathered in the peace park at the centre of Hiroshima this morning, to mark the dropping of a nuclear bomb on the city seventy years ago.
While survivors and family members of the victims joined the country’s leaders to commemorate, the details of the attack were retold across the world, in the pages of national newspapers and online publications alike.
However, one US paper made a questionable alteration to the events that took place on that fateful morning in August, 1945.
Whereas the plane that dropped the bomb was actually named the Enola Gay, The Observer Chronicle has decided to rename the vehicle – as the “Enola Homosexual”
The article reads: “U.S. bomber, the Enola Homosexual, dropped the primary atomic weapon ever for use in wartime on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945.
“The bombing, along side one other atomic assault on the town of Nagasaki two days later, are extensively credited with bringing the struggle within the Pacific to a swift conclusion.”
It is unclear whether the paper purposefully made the change, or if it was a mistake made by the reporter when writing the article.
At 8.15am this morning – the exact time the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped Little Boy, the atomic bomb, on the city – around 40,000 people took part in a silent tribute to the 140,000 people who died, many as soon as the bomb hit.
Hiroshima’s mayor – Kazumi Matsui – used the event to make a direct appeal to Barack Obama, pleading with him to rid the world of nuclear weapons, as he promised to in 2009.
“President Obama and other policymakers, please come to the A-bombed cities, hear the survivors with your own ears, and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings,” he said.
“You will be impelled to start discussing a legal framework, including a nuclear weapons convention.”
