This past exhibition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in , amid controversy.
Since , the entire restored B has been on display at NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. See some of the most remarkable military history in Nevada at the Historic Wendover Air Field museum, where you can tour masterfully restored World War II-era buildings like the Enola Gay B hangar, atomic bomb loading pits, and see uniforms, medals, propellers and more. The centrepiece of the exhibit was supposed to be the restored Enola Gay, the airplane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
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. The Enola Gay plane on display at the National Air and Space Museum. The Enola Gay exhibit is about the B that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War Two.
And I thought there is bad juju with that.
This has been Museum Archipelago. We no longer live in a world where critical documents remain locked in an archive, available only to pedigreed scholars. Articles Warbirds News. We will stop this unless these three things are clear in the exhibit scripts. By that fall, opposition to the exhibit, from the media and in Congress, bordered on the hysterical. That there was the reason there was no alternative is because the invasion, the land invasion of the Japanese home islands was imminent.
There is considerable evidence that it will do precisely the opposite. And I was frankly a little concerned about how I'd be received, that the idea of shipping artifacts about the atomic bombing to the Smithsonian for an exhibit they didn't really know about. Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode Gregg Herken: The exhibit was really given over to the restoration staff who are, who are really very good at their job and.
There is good news on this front. They felt that the exhibition dishonored veterans by discussing the controversy over the decision to drop the bomb and displaying graphic photos of atomic bomb victims. On the night before the mission, Tibbets surprised his crew by having the name painted on the nose of the plane. I believe that this would be a terrible mistake: Better than most people still alive today, I know what these weapons of mass destruction involve.
And off to the left was a panel that had, I think it was five toggle switches. Having worked for the last five years as part of a team of Australian filmmakers, American scholars, and Japanese bomb survivors, I am more convinced than ever that these transnational projects hold the greatest potential in casting tired tropes in a new light. The power of an interest group or the president to dictate the conclusions of an exhibit, backed up by effective media furry, has leveled up since the Enola Gay fiasco in Initially, feedback seemed positive.
But that exhibit never opened. That we perpetrated this horror against innocent victims is almost unbelievable. Paul Tibbets Jr. They're one of the few public spaces where we collectively encounter and process our shared history. Gregg Herken: It was shortly after I joined the museum and I went out to the restoration facility that the Smithsonian operates in Garber in Maryland.
And one of them had the label "bombs.
So I was sent there and I met with the director. Aviation Museum News. And we wanted to see if we could get artifacts from the Hiroshima Museum. Restoration efforts by the Smithsonian started on December 5, Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes.
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