The finished exhibit skips the issue completely. The original exhibit would have explored the long-contentious question of whether the bomb was needed to end the war. Hanging beneath the plane is a green bomb casing like the one that held "Little Boy." A sign reassures visitors that the Enola Gay is not radioactive and poses no danger, and that the bomb casing does not contain an actual bomb. Around the next corner are a propeller and propeller parts (spinner, motor, brake, hub, power gear assembly, cuff, blade), but by this time the visitor will be riveted on the gleaming B-29 itself, or at least the biggest chunk of it, 53 feet of the forward fuselage, a wingless tube. In the next room are two engines, and a video, again about the plane's restoration. On the other side of the room, up high, is an aileron, a wing flap. Nearby are words and pictures about how the plane was restored after it sat for many years outdoors at Andrews Air Force Base. So the first thing the visitor sees is an enormous piece of the Enola Gay's tail. The museum scrambled to fill up the bare walls and empty rooms.
The exhibition space, including interior walls and lighting, were already in place when the full exhibit was canceled. It would be impossible to create a museum exhibit about the plane that dropped the first A-bomb without mentioning that it instantly killed more than 78,000 people - some estimates go much higher - but the museum has almost managed to pull it off. The exhibit is short, Spartan and almost silent by the recent standards of the Smithsonian. "To display the Enola Gay without context, and without the considerable historical information and interpretation that is available, is to glorify and legitimate the use of nuclear weapons," said Jo Becker of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, speaking on behalf of a coalition of peace and religious groups. There are also plans for an all-day protest today beginning at 10 a.m., when the museum opens. Peace activists, meanwhile, held a soggy press conference yesterday morning in a drizzling rain to denounce the museum's actions. Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay, sent a letter of congratulations after touring the exhibit, saying he was "pleased and proud" of it. It dropped the bomb that ended the war.' It doesn't take a position on the morality of it."īut there is no doubt that the more traditional veterans groups will be happy with the end result. "I don't believe that this is a glorification of nuclear weapons," said the bow-tied Heyman. Finally, amid a debate over how many Americans might have died in an invasion of Japan, Heyman decided to scrap the show altogether and replace it with something far simpler. Meanwhile, the re-revisionism triggered a furor among Japanese who felt the exhibit should demonstrate the devastation of the bombing and the moral questions it raised that is why Tuesday's media preview drew a heavy contingent of Japanese media. The exhibit script was revised four more times. The Smithsonian received more than 30,000 pieces of angry mail.
A 500-page rough draft drew furious protest from veterans groups, who contended that it ignored Japanese wartime atrocities and unfairly questioned the decision to drop the bomb. But the decision to display it as part of a lengthy contemplation of the birth of the Atomic Age, and on the anniversary of the end of the war, proved disastrous. 6, 1945.įor years the Smithsonian Institution had the plane, and was steadily restoring it to vintage condition. The Enola Gay's trip to the northwest corner of the Air and Space Museum has been far more tortuous than the flight it took the morning of Aug.
Park Police SWAT team on the lookout for trouble.įifty years ago this summer, the B-29 named after the mother of its pilot dropped the atom bomb that instantly destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima and, with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki three days later, hastened the end of World War II.
Michael Heyman at a packed news conference yesterday morning attended by at least 26 TV camera crews and a U.S. It's like a passage from a Tom Clancy novel, converted to three dimensions.Īs for the destruction of Hiroshima: "I really decided to leave it more to the imagination," said Smithsonian Secretary I. It's about a big shiny plane and its determined crew. The focus is on hardware, not the nuances of history. The Enola Gay exhibit finally opens today for public viewing at the National Air and Space Museum.