A Pacific Theater battle location is recreated for “Tribute to Victory,” a progr
A Pacific Theater battle location is recreated for “Tribute to Victory,” a program honoring the American victory in World War II, as part of a Navy Day celebration at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on October 27, 1945. Explosive materials are being used to help create the appearance of munitions going off. Hollywood actors participated in the “pageant”. The hundred thousand who attended the “spectacle” were close in number to those who died in Nagasaki by the end of August. >>Ichiro Mortake, sent a cablegram to the Confederate Air Force calling the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a “historical crime to mankind” and demanded that the group never again stage such a re-enactment. On October 14, 1976, the U.S. Embassy in Japan issued an apology for the bad taste displayed by the persons responsible for the Texas air show. The Washington Post quoted unnamed sources describing Embassy officials as being “appalled” by the re-enactment and, especially, the reported involvement of U.S. military staff. Col. Glenn Bercot, spokesman for the Confederate Air Force, reacted to the international incident that his group had created by stating: “All we’re doing here is recreating the historic air battles of World War II with the aircraft we have. We are not trying to glamorize it in any way, but to show something solemn…” A ranking Japanese diplomat had already anticipated that kind of tone deaf excuse and had, the previous day, compared his country’s dismay over the Hiroshima reenactment to how Americans might feel if Japanese veterans restaged the Bataan death march. -- source link