Pentagon Flags WWII Plane That Nuked Japan as Woke

How does one go about purging a federal department of all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion? At the Department of Defense, it seems that the tactic is to simply input icky woke words into your system search and mark anything you find for deletion — even if it’s a historic airplane or war heroes. 

The Associated Press obtained a database of over 26,000 DOD images either already removed from the department’s website or flagged for removal. An official told the AP that the total number of images removed could be significantly higher. Among those images flagged to comply with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to “remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI),” are photos of the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II. 

Thinking individuals will be unsurprised to learn that the Enola Gay was not actually named after the sexual orientation. The plane was named after the mother of its pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay Tibbets. The plane is not gay. It wasn’t the only instance the AP identified of an image description including someone with the last name “Gay” being flagged for deletion. The same thing happened with a photo of members of the Army Corps of Engineers. 

Several photos of the Tuskegee Airmen — a group of the first Black fighter pilots to fight for the United States Military — were also found on the database of flagged images, though they had not yet been removed. 

Some of the flagged content seems to have been targeted out

of outright pettiness: a photo of a Marine posing with volunteers in front of a Vietnamese cultural display during a “Diversity Celebration Day,” event; a photo of Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro, the caption of which notes that she was one of the first three women to graduate from the Marine Infantry Training Battalion; a 2014 flyer announcing the 116th Air Control Wing (ACW), Georgia Air National Guard’s celebration of Women’s History Month, which featured photos of female service members. Several images related to mentions of transgender service members were also flagged in the database. 

Editor’s picks

Last month, Hegseth ordered the Pentagon to scrub any and all digital content that promotes diversity, including months that celebrate cultural awareness, from department and military branch websites and social media. The directive stated that all “information that promotes programs, concepts, or materials about critical race theory, gender ideology, and preferential treatment or quotas based upon sex, race or ethnicity, or other DEI-related matters with respect to promotion and selection reform, advisory boards, councils, and working groups” should be removed, with limited exceptions for content required by law.  

For all of Hegseth’s posturing about a return to discipline for the nation’s fighting forces, his first major project as defense secretary has been incredibly sloppy. According to a Thursday report from Wired, the Air Force has been using AI tools to conduct their review of training materials for DEI related content. In January, the Air Force was subjected to widespread criticism after removing training materials that featured the Tuskegee Airmen in order to comply with the anti-diversity purge. 

It seems the DOD hasn’t learned their lesson As one Marine Corps Official told the AP that all of the images they’ve submitted to the database “either has been taken down or will be taken down.”