Without special events, the Enola Gay, the plane that bombed Hiroshima, will continue to be quietly displayed at the National Air and Space Museum’s airport annex.
Survivors of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb tell the history
Setsuko Thurlow was 13 years old when the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
CBC English
- The Smithsonian Association in 2019 is under pressure from the Trump administration for what the president called “wake” content.
- The 1995 Aerospace Museum proposal for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had objected to the 1995 aerospace museum that underscored the suffering of Japanese victims too much.
Eighty years ago, the world entered the nuclear age. Enola Gay, the modified superfores of the US Army Air Corps B-29, has dropped an atomic bomb on a city in a Japanese city. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, Nagasaki hit a second atomic strike.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has not held events or special exhibits to mark Wednesday’s anniversary, despite having Enola Gay in its collection. Instead, the museum will share information about the bombing on social media and existing web content.
Otherwise, the unmarked anniversary comes when the country’s museums are at a crossroads after President Donald Trump’s executive order, with the aim of restoring what he calls “truth and sanity” into a museum and history education.
Trump’s executive order is merely a recent attack in a long-term war on the American past, including the mid-1990s of Enola Gay’s planned exhibits for bombing.th The anniversary sparked major clashes between Smithsonians, politicians and veteran organizations.
Trump White House officials have blown up Ronnie Bunch III, the Smithsonian secretary and founder of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. (The White House did not comment on this story.)
In June, the Smithsonian responded to Trump’s orders and began content reviews for 19 museums. The National Museum of American History recently removed references to Trump’s bluff each from the presidency exhibition, but said they would soon recover them.
“Obligation” to History
Two nuclear disarmament advocates with personal ties to the atomic bomb told USA Today they wanted to see the Smithsonian tackle on their anniversary – perhaps a considerable number of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors still live on, living in a more prominent and even way.
Multimedia storyteller and author Ari Beser is one’s grandsonst Lt. Colonel Jacob Bether, an Army Air Corps radar expert, was the only person to fly on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing missions.
“I think the Smithsonian has an obligation to commemorate history from all angles,” said Besea, a member of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. “It’s really important to understand the historical context in which these decisions are made, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the negative consequences of what they did.”
North Carolina author Kathleen Birkinshaw survived the Hiroshima strike before her Japanese mother moved to the US with her Air Force father, living today in chronic pain from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, which she considers to be related to her mother’s radiation exposure.
She expressed concern about a potentially simplified narrative that focuses on the war-winning nature of bombs, without acknowledging the human suffering they caused.
“They just heard (the bomb) win the war,” Birkinshaw said of the student speaking about his mother’s experiences. “Well, what cost?”
Enola Gay Controversy
But when the Smithsonian planned a special Air and Space Museum exhibition featuring Enola Gay before the bombing 50th On the 1995 anniversary, attempts to broach the impact and legacy of weapons sparked a political fire.
The proposed exhibit, initially entitled “Crossroads,” and later called “The Last Act,” was to include information on photographs and artifacts from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as survivors’ experiences. One of the proposed centerpieces: there is a lunch box of a 12-year-old Hiroshima girl who has been transformed by the heat of the blast, with burnt rice and peas still inside.
The draft exhibition would have asked them to consider a historical debate about whether bombs were necessary to end the war before the American invasion of Japan’s home island. Museum users would also have struggled with the dawn of the nuclear age, which began in August 1945.
Martin Harwitt, director of the Aerospace Museum, a Czech-American astrophysicist, told USA Today that his 1950s stint with the US military in the 1950s made a “big difference” to his approach at the Smithsonian as an engineer overseeing large-scale thermonuclear weapons tests.
However, a group of veterans, especially the Air Force Association and the American Legion, believed that the exhibition script portrayed Imperial Japan as a victim, not as the first invader of the Pacific War. Despite the committee’s review in early 1994, the revised script failed to satisfy both veterans and members of Congress.
Eventually, the Smithsonian pulled the display plug. Instead, Enola Gay was displayed with little contextual material. The plane is currently sitting at the offsite Udbur Hazy Center at the museum near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
It didn’t satisfy critics. More than 80 lawmakers, primarily Republicans, have publicly requested Harwitt’s resignation, filed shortly before the Senate hearing just before the plane was displayed.
Tom Crouch, a key Smithsonian figure involved in the production of the 1995 looted exhibit, declined to comment when USA Today reached.
“I’m sure I understand the sensitivity of the topic, especially now,” Crouch wrote in an email. “Given the current pressure on the (Smithsonian) secretary, I wouldn’t be comfortable commenting on this subject. Sorry.”
“The bigger disaster”
Harwitt, now 94, argued that Americans need more than a pleasant history about war. He fears that “people have forgotten everything” the threat of nuclear war.
“When we celebrate the end of World War II, we don’t want to remind you that the very nuclear weapons that have ended could one day lead to even greater disasters,” he said.
Davis Winkie’s role in covering nuclear threats and national security at USA Today is supported by partnership with Autorider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partner. Funders do not provide editor input.
