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The Vectren Dayton Air Show canceled a re-enactment of a World War II atomic bomb attack on Japan after protesters launched an online petition Wednesday.
The June 22-23 airshow at Dayton International Airport will keep the pyrotechnic show dubbed “the Great Wall of Fire,” but as a separate event not tied to the Aug. 6, 1945, attack on Hiroshima, said Terry Grevious, air show executive director.
“Many people feel because so many lives were lost it was not appropriate, so we decided not to go forward with it,” he said.
Gabriela Pickett, curator of the Missing Peace Art Space in Dayton, started the online petition to object to the “glamorization of destruction.” Within hours, dozens of people around the country had signed the petition.
“We’re talking about a lot of innocent civilians that died as a result and I’m not sure why we are even glamorizing bombs,” said Pickett, 45, of Dayton. She said the display didn’t fit Dayton’s image. “We’re innovators. We’re a city of peace. There’s a lot of organizations in this area that would object to this spectacle.”
The re-enactment was meant to mark an historic occurrence credited with ending the war and saving many American and Japanese lives if the conflict had continued, Grevious said. The air show has showcased pyrotechnic explosions in prior years but had not labeled it an atomic bomb display, he said.
The B-29 Superfortress “FiFi,” similar to the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, will stay in the airshow’s line-up but perform apart from the pyrotechnic explosions, he said.
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