Smithsonian ignores Hiroshima, Nagasaki bombings on 80th anniversary
In the absence of special events, the Enola Gay, the plane that bombed Hiroshima, will quietly remain on display at the National Air & Space Museum's airport annex.
- The 19-museum Smithsonian Institution is under pressure from the Trump Administration over what the president has called "woke' content.
- A proposed 1995 Air and Space Museum exhibit on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings was scuttled over objections that it overemphasized the suffering of Japanese victims.
Eighty years ago, the world entered the nuclear age when Enola Gay, a modified U.S. Army Air Corps B-29 Superfortress, dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, a second atomic strike hit Nagasaki.
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, despite holding the Enola Gay in its collections, is not hosting any events or special exhibits to mark the anniversary on Aug. 6, a spokesperson confirmed to Paste BN. The museum will instead share information and existing web content about the bombings on social media.
The otherwise unmarked anniversary comes as the nation’s museums stand at a crossroads after President Donald Trump’s March executive order aiming to restore what he called “truth and sanity” to museums and history education.
Trump’s executive order is but the most recent offensive in long-running wars over America’s past, including the mid-1990s when a planned exhibit of Enola Gay for the bombings’ 50th anniversary sparked a major clash between the Smithsonian, politicians, and veterans’ organizations.
Trump White House officials blasted Lonnie Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian and founding director of the institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as “a Democrat donor and rabid partisan” in April comments to the New York Times. (The White House did not comment for this story.)
In June, the Smithsonian, in response to Trump’s order, initiated a content review for its 19 museums. The National Museum of American History recently removed references to Trump’s impeachments from an exhibit on the presidency but said it will soon restore them.
A 'duty' to history
Two nuclear disarmament advocates with personal connections to the atomic bombings told Paste BN that they would’ve liked to see the Smithsonian tackle the anniversary − likely one of the final major anniversaries where a significant number of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors remain alive − in a more prominent and even-handed manner.
Ari Beser, a multimedia storyteller and author, is the grandson of 1st Lt. Jacob Beser, an Army Air Corps radar specialist who was the only person to fly on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing missions.
“I think that the Smithsonian has a duty to memorialize history from every angle,” said Beser, a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “It’s really important to understand the historical context in which these decisions are made, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the negative consequences of what they did.”
North Carolina author Kathleen Burkinshaw, whose Japanese mother survived the Hiroshima strike before immigrating to America with her Air Force father, lives today with chronic pain from reflex sympathetic dystrophy that she believes is related to her mother’s radiation exposure.
She expressed concern about potentially oversimplified narratives that focus on the war-winning nature of the bombs without acknowledging the human suffering they caused.
“They just hear that (the bomb) wins wars,” Burkinshaw said of the students to whom she speaks about her mother’s experience. “Well, at what cost?”
The Enola Gay controversy
But when the Smithsonian planned a special Air and Space Museum exhibition featuring the Enola Gay ahead of the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, attempts to broach the impact and legacy of the weapons set off a political firestorm.
The proposed exhibit, initially entitled “Crossroads” and later dubbed “The Last Act,” was to include photos and artifacts from both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as information about survivors’ experiences. One proposed centerpiece: a dead 12-year-old Hiroshima girl’s lunchbox, deformed by the heat of the blast, with charred rice and peas still inside.
The draft exhibit would have asked visitors to consider historical debates over whether the bomb was necessary to end the war before a planned (and surely bloody) American invasion of Japan’s home islands. Museum patrons also would have wrestled with the dawn of the nuclear age that began in August 1945.
Air and Space Museum director Martin Harwit, a Czech-American astrophysicist, told Paste BN that his 1950s stint in the U.S. Army as a technician monitoring massive thermonuclear weapons tests in the Pacific made a “significant difference” to his approach at the Smithsonian.
However, veterans groups – most notably the Air Force Association and American Legion – believed the exhibit script painted Imperial Japan as victims rather than as the initial aggressor in the Pacific War. Despite a committee review in early 1994, the revised script failed to satisfy both the veterans and members of Congress, who believed it still didn’t focus enough on Japanese forces’ brutality.
Ultimately, the Smithsonian pulled the plug on the exhibit. Instead, the Enola Gay was displayed with very little contextual material; now the plane sits at the museum’s off-site Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
That did not satisfy the critics. More than 80 members of Congress, predominantly Republicans, publicly demanded Harwit’s resignation, which he submitted just before Senate hearings weeks before the plane went on display.
Tom Crouch, a key Smithsonian figure involved in producing the scuttled 1995 exhibit, declined comment when reached by Paste BN.
“I am sure you understand the sensitivity of the topic, particularly now,” Crouch wrote via email. “I would not feel comfortable commenting on the subject given the current pressures on the Secretary (of the Smithsonian). Sorry.”
'Greater calamities'
Harwit, now 94, argued that Americans need more than just feel-good history about the war. He fears “people have forgotten all about” the threat of nuclear war.
“As we celebrate the end of World War II, nobody will wish to be reminded that the very nuclear weapons which ended (the war) could someday lead to even greater calamities,” he said.
Davis Winkie's role covering nuclear threats and national security at Paste BN is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.