New Delhi: The US defence department’s sweeping initiative to scrub diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content from its platforms has inadvertently targeted historical military imagery, including a photograph of the Enola Gay – the B-29 bomber that delivered the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 – according to a Daily Beast report. The image, featuring pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr. beside the plane named for his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, was flagged for removal solely due to the word “gay” in its caption.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s department has identified 26,000 items – including social media posts, website photos, and articles – for potential deletion, with officials warning the total could balloon to 100,000. An automated system scanning for DEI-related terms appears to lack context, the AP reported, leading to erroneous flags. Among the casualties are a portrait of Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay and photos of Army Corps of Engineers personnel with the surname Gay.
The purge mirrors a similar Trump-era effort at the IRS last month, where terms like “inclusion” were removed from tax manuals even when unrelated to DEI. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow criticised such tactics as “willy-nilly control-F deleting,” arguing they prioritize keyword targeting over substantive review.
While the Pentagon insists no final decisions have been made, the scale of the flagged material—much of which celebrates military heritage or honors contributions by women and minorities—has alarmed historians and advocates. For instance, posts commemorating Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month or Women’s History Month now risk removal.
The Enola Gay image, a pivotal artefact of World War II history, underscores the unintended consequences of conflating language with policy. Critics warn the approach risks distorting historical records and alienating service members with surnames caught in the semantic crossfire.
