In the early 1990s, with the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, the curators at the Smithsonian, a complex of eighteen museums in and around the nation's capital, proposed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the giant B-29 bomber that had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nevertheless, more hawkish forces, appealing to narrow definitions of patriotism, easily won the battle for public opinion. During the Smithsonian disputes, peace groups and historians provided a spirited and informed critique of the necessity for the Hiroshima bombing and highlighting its human costs. government’s Smithsonian Institution help to clarify the bases for this stubborn defense.
The heated controversies surrounding the opening in 19 of bomb-related exhibits at the National Air and Space Museum of the U.S. Over the nearly six decades since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a substantial majority of Americans has continued to defend the action. The Enola Gay, the Atomic Bomb and American War Memory
