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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.
ENOLA GAY EXHIBIT THE HISTORIANS LETTER TO THE SMITHSONIAN TV
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.