Meet the Enola Gay. She was named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the man who famously piloted this Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bomber during World War II.
On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. and his 11- man crew dropped a highly enriched uranium, explosion-type, “gun-fired,” atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan from this plane. This was the first use of a nuclear weapon in war.
Three days later, another plane dropped an atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan.
On August 14, 1945, the Japanese accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender.
The war was finally over.
I have heard this story so many times in history class, in documentaries, books, and thoughts from my dad the history buff. But I never dreamed I would get to see the Enola Gay in person.
It is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, a part of the National Air and Space Museum outside Washington DC. When my Pittsburgh pal and I adventured over to DC a few years ago, we stopped here on our way into the city. It was a good place to see some neat things and stretch our legs after a day in the car.
And, boy, do they have some neat things to see including the Space Shuttle Discovery and some truly unusual aircraft I had never seen before. Yet, nothing else reduced me to a pile of fan girl excitement followed by absolute grief over the power and magnitude of this piece of machinery.
It has been restored so it looks pretty good for its age. And it’s bigger than I imagined so that was kind of cool. You can get a pretty close view of this plane and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would say if airplanes could talk.
Smithsonian museums are world class so never pass up the opportunity to look around one. You never know what famous relic or little told story you might find!
The first time I saw Heart Mountain, it was a bleak and dreary day. That suited the mood of what we were about to endure – an interpretive center that breathes life into the story of an internment camp where Japanese Americans were held during World War II.
The interpretive center here is one of the very best I’ve ever experienced as they do a wonderful job not just telling the story but making you feel something for strangers.
It’s called empathy and we don’t have enough of this emotion these days.
It is an undeniable fact that Japan was our enemy and an unwaveringly cruel one at that. We were at war and our government argued that Japanese immigrants on this soil could present a threat. Never mind that many of these people had lived here for years and were proud, loyal Americans. Many were young children who should have been attending school with their friends and working on their Boy Scout projects.
Our government drew an arbitrary line down the western part of the United States and said anyone west of the line had to be contained. Never mind those folks living in the entire rest of the country. We were only concerned about the Japanese Americans who lived in that small area.
These camps were in places like Colorado, California, Wyoming and Arizona. About 2/3 of the 120,000 people sent to these camps were American citizens.
Heart Mountain is located near Cody, Wyoming which must have felt like a forsaken place, too cold and windy for west coasters who came without decent clothes, shoes or coats for the cold weather.
They left behind jobs, homes and businesses. They left behind middle class status. They left behind people and places important to them. They were permitted to bring just what they could carry in a suitcase and forced to sell, store or give away the rest of their possessions. They were not permitted to have pets and were forced to leave them behind.
They were assigned small barracks with thin walls, potbelly stoves for heat, and not enough fuel to go around.
Yet, they created a community where their children were educated and where they formed social clubs that made life better in that place. Many remained patriotic, proudly flying their American flags and insisting that their country would not do this to them if it weren’t for the good of the nation.
I read a comment by a man who said that they could have been marched off to their deaths and wouldn’t have known better. They went because they thought it was the right thing to do.
Racism toward Asian American people wasn’t a new concept. White farmers and business people didn’t like the competition from these “lesser” neighbors. It was commonly believed that Asian people were innately inferior and could never be real Americans.
Can you imagine?
But it’s this kind of racism that allows otherwise reasonable people to buy whatever lies and hysteria politicians are selling. It is this kind of racism that justifies ignoring the Constitution of the United States in favor of cruel indifference and a refusal of due process to those who have done nothing wrong.
How do you teach democracy in an internment camp?
That’s one of many questions you’ll explore there.
Heart Mountain is one of the single most important places I have visited and one that every American should experience for themselves. Honestly, I am doing a horrible job telling you this story. That’s due in part because it is such a complicated story to unwind and relate in a blog. Entire books have been written about what we did to those people and about what happened to some of them when they left. It’s also because this is one of the most gut wrenching places I have seen.
Our tour started with a short video that gave an overview of the Heart Mountain story. By the time the lights went up, I knew we were in for a special experience. Everyone should know these stories because we are doomed to repeat our mistakes when we ignore our history. This white washing of American history because it makes people feel bad for things that weren’t their fault is absolutely one of the dumbest things I have heard. Learning from the mistakes of our culture and the people before us is part of being human.
After the video, there are interactive displays, photos, and artifacts to help you learn the stories and understand the challenges these folks faced here.
The last time I saw Heart Mountain was a couple of days later. We returned to walk a short trail at sunset. At the center of this trail is a monument to the approximately 750 young men and women who were Heart Mountain residents who served their nation’s armed forces during World War II. These are the same young people whose liberties were stripped away by that very government.
Fifteen of them gave their lives for that nation.
We were there at the end of a beautiful day as the setting sun began to stripe the sky with colors only found in nature. It felt a little like nature was paying tribute to those who served as well as those who were born and died here, the ones who lost their homes and livelihoods, the ones who started over with a bus ticket and $25 in their pocket along with the silence of their government.
If you ever find yourself in the Cody area, please go visit Heart Mountain and experience it for yourself. If you are so inclined, there are many books written about the internment camps. Perhaps try reading one of them for help grasping why this matters. Visit Heart Mountain online.
If you live in America, today is a big day. The Presidential election has finally arrived.
If you don’t live in America, you’re probably watching this election with some degree of stress as well given that our choices at the ballot box play a role on the world stage.
Here’s my advice to you: vote and then find something useful to do. Personally, I voted days ago because I always worry that something will prevent me from doing it in person and I wasn’t missing this one. I have a busy workday ahead of me followed by a hair cut after work. I will welcome the distraction and hope that it’s enough to keep my mind free of worry and stress.
If you can, I suggest you find some way to achieve the same goal. Go for a walk. Better yet, go into nature for a long hike and time with the squirrels. Turn on some good tunes and use that nervous energy to clean your house or organize a closet.
If you voted, you did your part. Now it’s out of your hands so let it go and try focusing your attention on something that will improve your day or someone else’s. Worrying won’t make it better.
PS – The above photo is from a 1943 era cabin that once housed WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). You can see this cabin and many other interesting things at Carillon Park in Dayton. Approximately 100,000 of these WAVES volunteers helped to win the war and I always find comfort in this cabin. I like this scene with the flag.
If you were an American soldier during World War II and were transported by rail, the journey could be long and the passenger cars cramped. If you were leaving home for the first time to be sent off to a training camp or to one of the coasts to ship out, odds are you were nervous, homesick and scared.
If you were fortunate enough to travel the Pennsylvania Railroad between Columbus, Ohio and Pittsburgh, your train stopped for water at the Dennison, Ohio Depot for about five minutes. That doesn’t sound like much time but it was plenty of time for volunteers in Dennison to make such an impression on the soldiers they would nickname the place Dreamsville, USA.
Today, the story of what went on here at the nation’s third largest World War II canteen is told at the Dennison Railroad Depot Museum. This is a significant landmark especially since the other two largest canteens – in North Platte, Nebraska and New York City’s Stage Door Canteen – are gone and mere memories.
On New Year’s Eve 1941, Dennison resident Mrs. Lucille Nussdorfer witnessed several trains full of soldiers stop for only a few minutes before moving down the track. She said the young men on board looked hungry and tired. She told others that something had to be done to raise the morale of the troops and to show support for the war effort. Before long she was mustering her own army of local politicians, organizations, housewives and anyone else willing to help.
And help they did.
Over four years, nearly 4,000 women volunteered to make sure that no soldier left Dennison, Ohio without feeling the gratitude and kindness they hoped would be extended to their own fathers, brothers and sons.
Every soldier received a cup of coffee, sandwich, fruit and dessert like a cupcake or cookie. Sometimes there were magazines, chocolate bars and packs of gum too. It was all free.
If the troops weren’t permitted to get off the train, volunteers would board the train to pass out food, sometimes getting stuck until they reached the next station several miles away. Yet no soldier left Dreamsville empty handed and volunteers contributed the best they could make, buy or find. Whether it was peanut butter or ham, these volunteers made sure their boys were well fed. Some received Christmas presents. Some received the addresses of pretty girls who would be their pen pals. At least one set of these pen pals were eventually married.
This museum has a lot of fine items, photos and quotes on the wall that tell the history of the Dennison Depot including the contributions of this canteen. However, there was just one thing that stopped me dead in my tracks and it is something that I will always remember as the most important item in their collection.
It’s a sandwich wrapper made of wax paper and printed with a holiday message from the Salvation Army. But it’s more than that. It’s a monument to how important these canteens were to the 1.3 million troops they entertained and fed. All told, 13 percent of American Armed Service personnel during that time passed through Dreamsville.
According to the plaque beneath this sandwich wrapper, a gentleman showed up at the museum during the 50th anniversary of World War II and donated this artifact. He was one of the troops who was given a free sandwich during a stop here. He kept the bag, carried it with him through the war and kept it for the next fifty years as a symbol of the generosity and care and respect he received during his brief visit here.
Imagine what that must have meant to him, what it must have meant to all those individuals who benefited from the amazing things that went on at this depot and in this small town. And why did all those troops get the royal treatment that can only be found in a small town? Because one woman saw sadness and hunger among young men who were serving a cause much larger than themselves and she decided to embrace another cause that was much bigger than herself.
Never underestimate the power of one person on a crusade. Never underestimate the strength of a woman with a passion for service. Never underestimate the significance of a simple sandwich bag to someone in need of compassion.
As an aside, kudos to this museum for labeling everything so clearly and for telling the stories that humanize history and leave you excited to know more. I recently visited the Ohio History Center and realized that our state’s historical society does an absolutely terrible job with this very thing. Every time I think about that, I remember the Dennison Depot for doing so much better.
After all, history is about the people – not the presence of an artifact. The story here isn’t just the sandwich wrapper. The story is about the man who saved it, who kept it safe and who wanted to bring it back for generations to know how important this place was to him. It’s about the woman who saw a need and who convinced others to follow her. It’s about the people who worked together to make something magical happen that is still inspirational these eighty years later.
Without knowing this story, it would just be an old piece of wax paper with a Salvation Army holiday greeting on it. With the story, it lends insight into a world that would otherwise be lost to time. What a difference!
The Smithsonian Institute is one of America’s greatest gifts to her citizens. My favorite is the American History museum where such treasures are kept as Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Old Glory, the gowns of the First Ladies and a centuries old ship.
There’s also a display of Presidential memorabilia including this treasure.
It’s the CBS broadcasting microphone that Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke into when he gave his Fireside Chats.
It was through this microphone that FDR communicated with Americans about the darkest days of the Great Depression and through the terrifying years of World II. It’s hard to imagine a world without internet, a 24 hour television news cycle or immediate access to information. It’s strange to think of a world when people gathered around their radios to take in a sitting President’s Fireside Chats.
Incidentally, this concept was innovative when FDR began addressing the country in this way. His chats were meant to inform and reassure American citizens. He spoke directly to the citizens about his programs and initiatives and about the war.
There was no room for interpretation and no analysis or opinion from commentators who could disguise their opinions as fact as we see so much today.
It was information straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Are we really better off today with so many news outlets or businesses parading as media while they push their thinly veiled agendas? There was significantly less splintering of information back then and a greater sense of unity.
It’s funny but I long for simpler days that I never even knew in real life,
In case you’ve forgotten your American history, this is Pearl Harbor Day. It was 82 years ago today that a Japanese attack left 2,403 servicemen and civilians dead at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
In a Fireside Chat two days after the attack, Roosevelt said these words.
“We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war.”
-Franklin Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, December 9, 1941
“We must share together.” This is a phrase we don’t hear much anymore. We tend to not share so much as sit in our separate corners and nurse our own agendas.
May we never again know a time of such sorrow and hardship as another Great War. However, if we do, let us hope we are led by an individual who can intentionally unite rather than purposefully divide.
And may all those who who lost their lives so horrifically and so unexpectedly 82 years ago today rest in peace.
It’s Thanksgiving in America. This is meant to be a day of thanks for the blessings we’ve enjoyed for the last year but it’s more a day of food and football. Tomorrow, as folks will spend the day buying a bunch of stuff they probably don’t need and can’t afford.
A Norman Rockwell painting we are not.
This painting is called “Home For Thanksgiving.” It was featured on the November 24, 1945 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. That was 77 years ago today.
The young man and his mother were real people. He was freshly home from the war and helping his mother with chores he likely would have hated doing in the Army Air Corps. Kitchen Patrol or KP duty probably didn’t seem so bad in the warmth of his mama’s kitchen.
Rockwell paid them each $15 to sit for the portrait. I read once that they owned the local dairy in their Vermont small town and that the young man was Rockwell’s milkman.
This painting was donated to the Eugene M. Connor Post 193 of the American Legion in Massachusetts many years ago. But they didn’t know it was an original and left it hanging in a hallway for decades. When someone offered $500 for what the Legion thought was a print, they took it to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts for appraisal.
After learning they owned an American treasure, they loaned it to the museum for display and safekeeping.
Just last year, the Legion sold it at auction for $4.3 million. This hefty sum went into a trust and interest earned will help pay bills and fund future repairs for the Legion.
It’s a beautiful slice of Americana and I like how it illustrates a nation transitioning from wartime into peacetime. Something so everyday like peeling potatoes probably felt almost luxurious to the soldier and his mother who had suffered untold sleepless nights in his absence.
Her relief is palpable.
Gratitude would have been the only thing that mattered in many households across the nation that Thanksgiving. Our soldiers were headed home. Life was returning to a new normal. Life was good.
Wherever you are in this world today, I hope life is good. Happy Thanksgiving!
