Between history and memory: The Enola Gay controversy at the national air and space museum

Abstract

The National Air and Space Museum has been bitterly attacked for its ill-fated exhibit, The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, originally scheduled to open in May 1995 with the restored fuselage of the Enola Gay on display. The exhibit, critics argued, failed to provide the crucial context for the use of the bomb: the horrors of combat in the Pacific. The curators were accused of practicing “revisionist” history by portraying the Japanese as merely victims of nuclear attacks by vengeful Americans through photographs of victims of the bomb, particularly women and children. There was no place in this exhibit, argued critics, for “Monday morning quarterbacking” about the decision to drop the bomb. Nor did they think it appropriate to discuss the postwar legacy of the nuclear arms race. Critics charged that the Smithsonian had created an offensive exhibit that insulted World War II veterans.

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Notes on contributors

Edward T. Linenthal

This article appeared previously in a slightly different form in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was reprinted with slight modifications in a museum publication called The Exhibitionist. A somewhat similar article will be appearing in the Religious Studies Review