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Phelps Family Reunion 2008
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June 7, 2008 12:30 p.m. 5:00 p.m. SOUTH HILL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION (Just south west of Aunt Luella's house - see map) |
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Luella Rigby Long 3/2/18 Married 11/23/42 John Long 2/3/18 - 8/6/45 ˜ |
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˜ Memorial at Hiroshima
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-127436112.html As the Enola Gay went on exhibit at the Air and Space Museum Annex in November 2003, a serendipitous irony unfolded in Japan at the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims. Opened in 2002, it has dispassionately displayed photographs of 9 000 of the 140 000 people killed on 6 August 1945. As a major industrial centre, Hiroshima held thousands of ethnic Koreans as forced labour, as well as unknown hundreds of Japanese Americans trapped in Japan by Tokyo's 7 December 1941 strike against Pearl Harbor. The Enola Gay's crew killed many of them, including at least ten of their American comrades as they sat in prisoner-of-war cells. One of them was Corporal John Long Jr, a 27-year-old gunner who had served on an American B-24 shot down over Japan only a few days earlier. A former steelworker from New Castle, Pennsylvania, Long and several crew members from another Army Air Force B-24 and a Navy Helldiver dive-bomber were under detention in Hiroshima when the bomb detonated. At least seven American POWs are listed on the official ceremonial roster of Hiroshima victims enclosed in the stone monument memorializing the bombing. Their names were added after a Japanese professor uncovered a war-time government list of twenty American POWs apparently killed at the time.
I think most Americans would look at all those Japanese faces and say, 'That's too bad. A lot of Japanese people died.' But you get one American face and they might feel a little more of a connection. The Smithsonian Institution has given the American public ready access to a meticulously restored Enola Gay as the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, but has reduced the weapon, the delivery system, and the event to no more than a remarkable technological feat. There is little said about the bomb and its aftereffects, in Japan or the United States. For this information, the public must turn to Japan. At the Hiroshima Memorial Hall, the curious can now view a photo of US Army Air Force Corporal John Long Jr looking out from the past along with 9 000 Asian atomic bomb victims. As Shigeru Aratani observes, this one photograph matters: 'It shows how indiscriminate the slaughter was. Enemies and friends, soldiers and civilians, women and children--they were all killed'. Some web links: http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/dec2002-jan2003/cartwright.htm POW Added to Hiroshima Gallery of Dead The Spokesman-Review.com - For first time, Hiroshima memorial enshrines American The Anniston Star - Photo of American victim of Hiroshima bomb now included in memorial display Hiroshima friendly fire toll now laid bare | The Japan Times Online
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Harry and Luella Rigby were raised by Thomas and Susan Phelps. Their parents and 4 brothers and sisters having died. Their parents during the flu epidemic in 1919. They were raised as brother and sister of the Phelps children and are still considered as such. 
In January 2004, Corporal Long's great nephew, Nathan Long, donated a photograph of the World War II airman in his Army Air Force uniform to the Hiroshima Memorial Hall. Curator Shigeru Aratani put Corporal Long's portrait on the wall--along with captions revealing his pre-war occupation and name--with the thousands of other photos of the city's Japanese victims. Nathan Long grew up in Japan and now works as a teacher in Tokyo. He obviously is uncomfortable with how Hiroshima's agonies are hidden in the statistics of 140 000 anonymous deaths. His great-uncle's fate is a 'small story,' but Long believes it could be very telling for visitors to recognize this strange twist of nuclear terror: 
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