Outside the entrance to the display sits a restored Hellcat fighter plane _ built to counter the deadly Japanese Zero. The Enola Gay exhibit fills 5,000 square feet _ the same space as planned for the earlier display. When the dust settled, the new exhibit was set up in the northwest corner of the huge Smithsonian complex's most popular museum. The director of the Air and Space Museum, Martin Harwit, quit in anger. So, after months of controversy and some 30,000 letters, Heyman canceled the show in January.
"For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism," that early script said.Įven after Smithsonian officials rejected that script and added material describing the Japanese aggression during the war, veterans groups said the museum was reaching too far into judgments about the bomb and the war. In one early script, the war in the Pacific was described as a "war of vengeance." The original Smithsonian approach offered artifacts from the Hiroshima bomb site, photographs of victims and a discussion of the reasons President Truman dropped the two bombs on Japan. American University in Washington, D.C., is sponsoring a small exhibit on the atomic bomb this summer. Peace activists and some historians were upset with the treatment, though they have a chance to view a more thorough look at the bombings and the nuclear age. There is no attempt to persuade anyone about anything." I firmly believe that you have gotten to the basic facts. "I am pleased and proud of the exhibit," Tibbets wrote in a letter to Heyman last week. without a lot of inappropriate educational commentary." "We think most veterans are going to be pleased with the exhibit," said Phil Budahn, spokesman for the American Legion. Veterans groups and members of Congress got a chance to view the exhibit last week, followed by the media Tuesday. Michael Heyman, a "simpler" display that focuses mostly on the fuselage of the Enola Gay and ignores the debate over the use of the bomb. It is, in the words of Smithsonian Institution Secretary I. The Enola Gay exhibit that opens today at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is washed of the controversy that tangled the esteemed museum complex and nearly killed the display in the year of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.