With the 50th anniversary of that bombing less than a year away, the question has grown more urgent: how to display the Enola Gay? The Smithsonian planned an exhibition starting in May of next year entitled “The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War.” But early this year, when the museum revealed the proposed contents of the exhibit, trouble immediately followed. To its many critics, the proposal was little more than a testament to the bombing’s victims, all emotion and little historical context, full of language that read like Japanese wartime propaganda. “Fearing that unconditional surrender would mean the annihilation of their culture,” the early version read, “Japanese forces fought on tenaciously.”
Not surprisingly, U.S. veterans’ groups were incensed. “The museum is essentially using the Enola Gay as a prop in an emotionally charged program about the atomic bomb,” wrote Air Force Association executive director Gen. Monroe W. Hatch Jr. in one typical letter of protest. Stung, the Smithsonian ordered up three separate reviews of the exhibit, including one from a panel of historians. The verdict was damning. “The imbalance is almost palpable,” wrote one reviewer. “If I didn’t know better . . . I would leave the exhibit with the strong feeling that Americans are bloodthirsty, racist killers who after beer parties and softball go out and kill as many women and children as possible.”
Given the subject matter, controversy was probably inevitable. Ever since the bomb was dropped, the world has debated the implications – military, political and moral – of using nuclear weapons. But the Smithsonian, at least in its initial proposal, gave little hint that it had considered either the complexity of that debate or the historical circumstances surrounding the wrenching decision to drop the bomb. At its core, that decision revolved around one issue: would it bring a swifter end to the war, with less loss of life, than a full-blown invasion of Japan? The proposed exhibit gave that question short shrift.
Most historians have come to believe that ultimately both American and Japanese lives were saved. Consider the battle for the tiny island of Saipan just 11 months before the bomb: 25,000 Japanese and 4,000 Americans died in just days of battle. Hundreds of Japanese civilians threw themselves off a cliff rather than risk capture by the Americans. Some who hesitated were shot in the back by Japanese soldiers. Though some Japanese and Western scholars argue that a mere demonstration of the bomb might have prompted a Japanese surrender, there’s little evidence to support that. The U.S. calculation, grimly momentous though it was, seems inescapable: an invasion of Japan would have been bloodier than the bombing.
Since the critical barrage began, the Smithsonian has changed the title of the exhibit and continues to revise its contents. There is now a section on Japanese aggression, including the Rape of Nanking and the infamous Bataan death march. But museum officials insist that veterans will not get what some have suggested: the Enola Gay next to a sign that simply says, “This is the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.” Museum director Harwit says the Smithsonian is trying to help Americans “arrive at some kind of conclusion about how we want to think about this as a nation.” The controversy the Smithsonian never wanted may further that aim more than the exhibit it planned.
