“Enola Gay” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)
The titular, Enola Gay is the name of the atomic bomb-dropping aircraft which had been named after Brigadier General Paul Tibbet’s mother. The song directly speaks about the dropping of an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan.
The singer personifies the aircraft, in the first line stating that she shouldn’t have carried out the attack. Majority of the lines basically suggest that the killing of about 66,000 people through the bombing was entirely unnecessary. At the same time, the writer is in a state of grief as he recalls 08:15 (JST) as the time the bomb (Little Boy) was dropped in the city and how nothing could ever reverse what happened then. In the final lines of the track, the writer implores that the atrocities should and will never be forgotten due to its devastating effects.
Release of “Enola Gay”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released this classic on 26th September, 1980. The band released it as a single off their 1980 album titled Organisation. Andy McCluskey of OMD is credited as the exclusive composer of “Enola Gay”.
Dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945
On the 6th day of August 1945, the United States of American brutally attacked the Japanese industrial city of Hiroshima via an atomic bomb. The bombing together with that in Nagasaki, another city in Japan, caused at least 129,000 deaths. The victims were mostly civilians. During the last year of World War II, the Allies planned a serious attack on Japan.
Two nuclear bombs were produced from the Manhattan Project which was a collaborative work by the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. The bomb, which was known as “Little Boy”, contained roughly 64kg of uranium-235. Its intended target was the Aioi Bridge. However, it sadly missed it and landed over the Shima Surgical Clinic. At the end of the day, countless properties and innocent lives were lost.
You are aware of the back story to the dropping of the bombs, right?
The 20 million dead (mostly civilians) killed by the IJA as it rampaged through China, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, The Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea…..
The reason the invasion of Japan was planned was their refusal to surrender – as years of fighting through the Pacific had shown. The invasion was expected to cause over a million Allied casualties, and several million Japanese.
If you want atrocities, read up on the Rape of Nanking, and the behaviour of the IJA in occupied countries. Dropping the bomb was the best response to the situation as it was at the time.
the Japanese had already surrendered. They dropped the bombs anyway. horrific war crimes.