"The tiny Pacific island of Tinian has two extremely long parallel runways on its northern end, now obsolete and overgrown. On August 6, 1945, one was used to launch the Enola Gay, the American military aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima."
"Though it would be extremely trite and insensitive here to suggest that, when it comes to inflicting hell on the world, Tinian is only in the ha'penny place compared to its near-neighbour-to-the-north, Saipan, from an Irish perspective, that's basically how it feels."
Tinian is a tiny Pacific island that features two extremely long parallel runways on its northern end, now obsolete and overgrown. On August 6, 1945, one of those runways launched the Enola Gay, the American military aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima. The island retains a stark historical significance tied to that mission despite physical decay. From an Irish perspective, Tinian feels comparatively insignificant next to nearby Saipan, a contrast framed in terms of relative impact and presence. The juxtaposition underlines lingering echoes of wartime history amid present-day obscurity.
Read at Independent
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