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Enola Gay

Process

It is not easy to determine whether a historical event  is historically important. Not everyone will have the same opinion. And what criteria should one use?

Below are a number of criteria (benchmarks) that you can use. Maybe you like to use other criteria, for example your own criteria. That's ok, but you have to specify what criteria you use.

Step 1

Read the lyrics of the song of OMD on the flight of the Enola Gay (and listen to the song if possible).

Step 2

Consider what information you need to answer the questions of your choice (see the questions in the box). 

Step 3

Search and select the information you need. You can use these sources, but , of course, you may use other sources as well.

Step 4

Finally, answer in up to one A4 page, the question whether the flight of the Enola Gay was of great historically import to the people in your two questions. Of course you have to motivate your answer.

Criteria

Events and developments

1.  Time

• was the event or development important to contemporaries?

• was the event or development important to to people in the years/ages after the event/development?

• is the event or development important for the present?

• is the event or development important for the future?

2.  Quantity

• how many people are involved in the event or development?

• did the event had an impact on society for a long period of time?

3.  Quality

• how influential was the event/development in the short and long term?

• did the event/development influence other developments?

• did the event/development lead to (radical) changes in society?

• was the event/development a turning point / milestone in history? 

Little boy

 A criminal act?

‘The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb …

John Pilger in the Guardian, 8 augustus 2008

 Questions

1. Is the flight of the Enola Gay of great historical interest to OMD?

2. Was the flight of the Enola Gay of great historical interest to the U.S. government in 1945 ?

3. Was the flight of the Enola Gay of great historical interest to the people of Hiroshima?

4. Do you think this flight is of great historical interest?
   

Copyright:  Albert van der Kaap, 2011