The Loss of the Enola Gay Exhibit 

The Enola Gay exhibit of the Smithsonian starts by setting up the context for the events surrounding the Enola Gay plane and eventual bombing of Hiroshima. As audience members walk through, they view the starting location of the Pacific Islands, the home front of the war. By doing this the exhibit is setting up the humanity of the events to follow. Visitors then encounter the why: the decision process behind the creation and eventual bombing. The process of developing an atomic arsenal, and eventually unveiling it to the world in horrific fashion over Japan, was driven by political and militaristic factors. Initially, it was driven by fear of Germany after World War II obtaining a weapon of mass destruction, as Germany was rumored to have developed an atomic weapons program of their own. It then spiraled into the fear of being replaced as a world power, and that America couldn’t bring the same firepower as the Soviet Union, as the Soviets threatened to claim the achievement of ending the war first. By creating the first atomic bomb and dropping it on the unsuspecting Japanese, the U.S. re-established their dominance and place as 1st place among the world powers. This nationalistic drive proceeded to birth some of the most deadly weaponry known to man. 

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The other half of the exhibit emphasized the humanity of the disaster and the destructive after-effects the Americans left behind them. This window into the hell-on-earth that had been unleashed on Hiroshima was seen as too disturbing for visitors. Richard H. Kohn, in his article History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay Exhibition, describes this part of the proposed exhibit as, “Returning again and again to the death and mutilation of women and children, this section of the exhibit succeeded even in text form in eliciting shock and disgust. The many pictures of human pain and suffering, the heartrending quotations from observers and victims, all appealed to the emotions of viewers”(1).

The original exhibit as they describe here on page 1043 was unbalanced. They believed it was unbalanced because of the combination of the omission of the material and the emphasis of other material. “The problems with the script were the omission of material, the emphasis on other material, the order and placement of facts and analysis, and the tone and the mood”(2). They believed the exhibit would appeal too much to viewers’ emotions though sight and sound, and the script “could be read to condemn American behavior at the end of WWII”(3). 

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In general those in charge believed the exhibit's script was pushing a biased agenda. That it didn’t leave any wiggle room for visitors to interpret for themselves the justification of the US military dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Some believed that “such scenes not only could reinforce anxieties about whether the United States needed to use the bomb but could provoke feelings of guilt and shame among American visitors, including veterans”(4).

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Veterans alone caused quite a sticky wicket for the Enola Gay exhibit. Tom Crouch, chairman of the Aeronautics Department and overseer of the exhibit script, told Martin Harwit: “Do you want to do an exhibition intended to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibition that will lead our visitors to think about the consequences of the atomic Bombing of Japan? Frankly, I don’t think we can do both”(5). Higher ups were more concerned with biased opinions being overturned than the actual telling of the story of the bombing of Hiroshima.

The American public is rarely forced to reconcile with the past, this exhibit would’ve allowed this to happen. Reconciliation isn't easy or comfortable but it’s important to meet these atrocities head-on. Not only a loss to public education, but a loss of Japanese history, and thousands of Japanese voices, that have been discredited out of the fear that it would make people question the actions of the U.S. military, or make veterans question the morality of their fighting. Veterans and patrons alike believed the museum would capture the patriotic efforts and honor the many sacrifices American soldiers made. They were left underwhelmed and and disappointed by the portrayal and the exhibit’s mission, which ultimately ended in the exhibit’s cancellation. The loss of this exhibit speaks volumes to the unacknowledged humanity of the Asian-American community and how their portrayal in history remains skewed. “The tragedy of the cancellation is that a major opportunity to inform the American people and international visitors about warfare, air power, World War II, and a turning point in world history was lost"(6). 

I believe the cancellation of this exhibit was an incredible loss to public education and public memory of the end of World War II. 

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Endnotes:

1.  Richard H. Kohn, “History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay Exhibition,” The Journal of American History 82, no. 3 (December 1995): 1036, https://doi.org/10.2307/2945111. 1046.

2.  Richard H. Kohn, “History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay Exhibition,”1043.

3.  Ibid. 1044.

4.  Ibid. 1046.

5.  Ibid. 1041.

6.  Ibid. 1046.