On Capitol Hill, many lawmakers have called for congressional hearings into how the federally funded Smithsonian could have gotten itself into such a bind. “But having history interpreted by political passion and by congressional investigation is the worst way to do history.”
“When you go to the museum of record of the United States, you expect the full story,” Musil said. Musil, director of policy and programs for the organization, said that “merely showing a plane does nothing” to advance the historical significance of Hiroshima. Others were disappointed, however, including representatives of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is dedicated to studying the Nuclear Age and had urged the museum to include depiction of the death and destruction in Japan. “The winners, just as they were 50 years ago, are the American people.” “In that sense,” Detweiler said, “the battle over this exhibit is a metaphor for the very war it purported to record and its outcome a metaphor for the war’s climactic last act. The fight over the exhibit, Detweiler said, also came at “no small cost” to World War II veterans humiliated by the museum curators’ attempt to depict the Japanese as victims and Americans as coldhearted avengers of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Detweiler said the controversy “inflicted grave damage” on the prestige of the Smithsonian, especially as it approaches its 150th anniversary next year. When National Air and Space Museum Director Martin Harwit lowered that number from 229,000 in the script to 63,000, based on a recommendation from Barton Bernstein, a Stanford University academician, the American Legion and other veterans groups were so incensed that last week they demanded that the entire exhibit be scuttled.įor veterans, led by the national American Legion officials here, the victory was bittersweet.Īmerican Legion National Commander William M. veterans.Īt the core of the debate was the number of casualties that would have been expected in an invasion of Japan.
The initial criticism was followed by a series of attempts to rewrite the script that in turn drew complaints from other historians and from anti-nuclear war activists that history was being cleaned up to satisfy U.S. Heyman announced that the institution will scrap its ambitious display titled “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” which was to feature photographs and oral histories of the destruction. The museum, which serves as trustee of the nation’s heritage, had planned to use the Enola Gay-the B-29 Superfortress that carried the first atomic bomb-as the central exhibit in a display showing the destruction that incinerated two Japanese cities in the last days of World War II.
“I have a number of regrets about this sad situation,” said Heyman, an ex-Marine who has headed the prestigious institution for just four months. Michael Heyman said in describing how the Smithsonian became embroiled in a yearlong controversy that not only questioned the museum’s intentions but caused a slump in museum funding. “We made a basic error,” Smithsonian Secretary I. In a victory for World War II veterans, the Smithsonian Institution backed down Monday from plans to commemorate the first use of the atomic bomb with an exhibit that critics charged would portray the United States as heartless aggressors at the close of the war against Japan.