A PROPOSAL
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A
Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibit at
the National Air and Space Museum
Few events have had a more profound
impact on our times than the creation of nuclear weapons
and their employment against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Half a century later, the implications of the decision
to drop the atomic bomb are still being debated. As we
approach the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing
of Japan, the National Air and Space Museum has an
opportunity and an obligation to help visitors
understand this pivotal moment in the history of the
twentieth century.
An Interested Public
Museum staff members recognize that
this is an emotionally charged subject marked by strong
feelings, widespread public interest and a broad range
of opinion. The primary goal of this exhibition will be
to encourage visitors to make a thoughtful and balanced
re-examination of the atomic bombings in the light of
the political and military factors leading to the
decision to use the bomb, the human suffering
experienced by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and
the long-term implications of the events of August 6 and
9, 1945. While there will undoubtedly be other
commemorations in connection with the fiftieth
anniversary, this exhibit can provide a crucial public
service by reexamining these issues in the light of the
most recent scholarship. The Museum hopes that the
proposed exhibition will contribute to a more profound
discussion of the atomic bombings among the general
public of the United States, Japan and elsewhere.
The scholarly content of the exhibit will
be ensured through the participation of lead curator Dr.
Michael Neufeld, an historian with expertise in World
War II, and Aeronautics Department chairman Dr. Thomas
Crouch, who curated “A More Perfect Union,” a
Smithsonian Institution exhibition dealing with the
internment of Japanese-American citizens during World
War II. That exhibit questions the internment in terms
of the Constitution of the United States, which is
intended to guarantee basic rights to all citizens,
irrespective of race or origin.
Expert consultation will be provided by
the Museum’s Space History Department Chairman, Dr.
Gregg Herken, a leading historian of American Cold War
diplomacy, by the many historians interested in this
topic in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum
of American History, and by other scholars inside and
outside the Institution. In addition, a panel of
distinguished advisers, representing a broad range of
viewpoints, and including both American and Japanese
experts, will assure the accuracy of the exhibit and
guarantee a wide range of informed perspectives.
Interpretive Strategies of the Exhibit
The exhibition will concentrate on the
missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the decision
to drop the bomb in the spring and summer of 1945. The
necessary historical contexts will be emphasized: the
Manhattan Project and its origins, the escalating spiral
of attacks upon civilian populations during World War
II, and the peculiar character of the Pacific War,
including the racism manifested by both sides. These
issues can be brought to life for the general public
through the use of newsreel and movie footage and
through the display of original documents (or
reproductions, if necessary), such as the 1939 Einstein
letter to Roosevelt regarding the possibility of an
atomic bomb. Magazines, posters and other artifacts of
government propaganda and the media can also be used to
give a sense of the atmosphere in the last months of the
wear in the United States and Japan.
This latter material provides a
transition to the section on the decision to drop the
bomb – clearly the most difficult part of the exhibit
from both an historical and conceptual standpoint, but
also the most crucial since it goes to the heart of the
ethical dilemmas of the atomic bombings. Visitors will
bring with them sharply different attitudes and
assumptions, ranging from a belief that dropping the
bomb prevented a bloody invasion of Japan to a
conviction that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes –
a viewpoint more likely to held by our many Japanese and
other foreign visitors. The Museum does not intend to
join in this debate, which involves complex questions of
an historical and ethical nature. What the exhibition
can do is offer the visitor a much more nuanced picture
of the decision-making in the American and Japanese
governments in 1945, which, together with the
aforementioned historical contexts, may lead many to
reconsider or deepen their understanding of this
controversial topic.
Form a technical standpoint, the problem
will be to bring to life a discussion carried out in
closed rooms and through diplomatic channels. Succinct
labels, key documents and quotations of the words of
major participants can overcome many of these
difficulties. A “Little Boy” atomic bomb casing, like
the one dropped on Hiroshima, will be used here to
indicate the reality of the bomb that was becoming
available to American decision-makers. A fuller
discussion of the topic however, would be left to
outside reading suggested in a brochure that would be
available to visitors.
A key component of the next part of the
exhibition will be the forward fuselage of the B-29
Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the Hiroshima
Bomb. The entire aircraft has been in the Museum’s
possession for many decades and will be fully restored
by 1995, but it is too large to fit in any of the
Museum’s galleries. Therefore, the exhibition will be
using only the forward fuselage, comprising the
aircraft’s cockpit and bombsight, the evocative name
painted on the port side of the aircraft, and the
bomb-bay with a reconstruction of the special
atomic-bomb sway braces and latch. In the vicinity of
this massive artifact we will treat the development and
manufacturing of the B-29, the firebombing of Japan, the
development of the bases in the Marianas, the 509th
Composite Group (Col. Tibbets’ special atomic weapons
unit) and the final preparations for the missions.
Beyond the fuselage itself, artifacts that can be used
in this sections will include an engine, propeller or
other pieces of the Enola Gay (to further convey
its massive scale), plus documents, pictures and
memorabilia of the crews.
The final major section of the exhibit
will treat the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
themselves and the ensuing surrender or Japan. The full
dimensions of the destruction and human suffering in the
two cities will be shown here. Pictures of the victims
must be included, however upsetting that may be to some
visitors. We will also include, as far as possible,
bomb-damaged artifacts from the two cities and other
documents and loan of items from the museums in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A “Fat Man”-type plutonium
bomb-casing, such as that used on Nagasaki, will also be
shown here. A video or movie in this section would
include footage of the missions and their aftermath,
plus interviews with survivors and crew members of the
attacking and accompanying aircraft.
The exhibition would conclude, as it
began, by noting the debatable character of the atomic
bombings, as well as their important role as one of the
starting points of the nuclear age and Cold War. The
closing video will include the perspectives of a whole
range of people — both historical actors, survivors,
scholars and ordinary people, both Japanese and
American. At the very end, visitors will be able to
ponder what they have seen and record their own
reactions and thoughts in comment books. They will leave
the exhibition, it is hoped, better informed and with a
deeper appreciation for the importance and the
complexity of these watershed events in modern history.
Return to the Chronology of Controversy
