1995 enola gay exhibit

In the mid-term elections the Republican Party swept to power and captured both Houses of Congress in what has been called the Republican Revolution. The crew of the Enola Gay in Tibbets is in the center of the group [Source: Air Force image via the Dept.

of Defense] In the summer ofthe National Air and Space Museum made headlines by unveiling its newest exhibit: a seemingly unremarkable B bomber attended by only a small text panel and a looping video of its restoration.

The exhibition of the fuselage ran from January to May Despite all the controversies, this exhibit drew more than a million visits in its first year alone, and a total of nearly four million visitors by the time it closed. The culture wars were firmly on the agenda for many of the incoming Republicans who believed they had lost control of major cultural institution such as the press, the entertainment industry, universities, and museums.

The practice of professional history therefore soon found itself in the target sights of Republicans. By contrast, curators at the museum based their right to interpret the past on their mastery of the source material, their academic degrees, and the advice they received from professional historians.

It would be one of the most popular special exhibitions in the history of the Air and Space Museum. June 28, Air & Space Museum puts the forward fuselage of the Enola Gay and other items on display as part of a straightforward historical exhibition.

After five rewrites and nearly a year of intense argument between the museum, veteran organisations, and Congress, the exhibit was cancelled and replaced with a drastically scaled down and less graphic exhibit. Enola Gay Today. Within a year, it draws more than a million visitors--making it, by far, the most popular special exhibition in the history of the Air & Space Museum.

The centrepiece of the exhibit was supposed to be the restored Enola Gay, the airplane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Unlike other instances of controversy surrounding historical commemoration in the US, such as the disagreements surrounding the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, the Enola Gay exhibit could not be saved by a compromise.

Enola Gay Exhibit 1995

For veterans, collective memory was the same as historical reality. Floor plan for a proposed (but never completed) exhibition of the Enola Gay titled "The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II," Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession - National Air and Space Museum, Enola Gay Exhibition Records, Courtesy of Jennifer Wright.

Figure 2: The Vietnam Memorial Wall. On 20 JanuaryCongressman Gerald B. Solomon R-NYthe chair of the House Committee on Rules, wrote to Martin Harwit, the exhibit of the museum, and Michael Heyman, the newly installed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution threatening to cancel the Smithsonian's congressional appropriation if they did not bow to the demands of their critics.

The Enola Gay exhibit was not exempt from the wrath of the newly appointed lawmakers: during the height of the controversy, the Senate passed a resolution submitted by leading Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum which condemned the exhibit as revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans.

An America without that heroic image is unimaginable to the generation that fought the war, and to those in subsequent generations who have defined their lives by it. The importance of this image and this collective memory of the US cannot be underestimated.

The memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and of World War II as a whole, holds a very special place in the cultural psyche of America. The problem with myths is that they cannot be refuted by facts. Historians are constantly challenging received wisdom and established interpretations.

The Three Soldiers statue, which was added later in response to the original wall, is in the foreground. In this regard the Enola Gay controversy echoed earlier struggles in the so-called culture wars over who controlled American culture, who valued the American past, who deserved mention within it, and who controlled any federal action that touched on such matters.

The exhibit generated an outcry amongst veterans, members of Congress, and others who felt that it depicted the Japanese as victims in World War II and questioned the morality behind the decision to drop the atomic bomb. The exhibit exposed a stark contrast between how historians operate and the way most Gay view the past.

The museum, which serves as trustee of the nation’s heritage, had planned to use the Enola Gay--the B Superfortress that carried the first atomic bomb--as the central exhibit in a display. But Congress was not done enola. Occasionally, however, the disjunction between the scholarly and public attitude to history is exposed with stark clarity, usually when an ongoing process of historical revision and reassessment focuses on an issue about which many citizens are passionate such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The exhibit, scheduled to open in 1995 spring ofthe 50 th anniversary of the end of World War II, would focus on the legacy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Discussions about facts and their importance are well suited for academic conferences and debates, but facts are not enough to make someone, in the case of the Enola Gay exhibit World War II veterans, from letting go of a story they have been telling, and have believed, for most of their lives.

Figure 3: Newt Gingrich, the leader of the so-called Republican Revolution in the mid-term elections. At a glance, it was little different from dozens of.