"This is, in a sense, a new thing," he said. The Enola Gay controversy or some might called it the Smithsonian atomic bomb exhibit debates sparks a History Wars in American public. Wills said he expects more such controversies involving history because the study of America's past is undergoing reassessment. At the same time the Smithsonian-Enola Gay controversy was unfolding, larger arguments were happening around the country the field of history was being shaken up by the National Standards for United States history. Historian Wills noted: "The representatives of the people can never entirely turn over public funds without accountability when they support scholarship." Many historians around the United States and Japan criticized the Smithsonian for this and claimed it was censorship of history.
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The role of a professional historian, whatever his or her political beliefs or loyalties, is to help people understand the context of events." "I guess what I would look for would be really careful, responsible leadership on the part of museum staff.
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Jack Hurley, history professor at the University of Memphis, said, "I'm not happy with the degree of political interference that political leaders are imposing on public institutions-not just museums, but the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and public broadcasting."īut he acknowledged museum directors have to perform a "balancing act" between public concerns and scholarly pursuit. Download Citation The Smithsonian and the Enola Gay: A Retrospective on the Controversy 10 Years Later On Aug. My father saw history through the prism of World War II-that America fights good wars." I started college in 1971, when a lot of American history was being seen through the prism of Vietnam. The Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum has received and reviewed the petition from the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and. "He felt he'd never come out of the war alive, that I would never have been born, without the bomb.
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"I remember conversations with my father," Pollock said. He suggested generational differences between World War II veterans and curators educated in the Vietnam War era may have played a role. Mark Pollock, professor of rhetoric at Loyola University Chicago, agreed that both sides' perceptions of the Enola Gay exhibit may have differed from reality. "They (museums) are responsible not only for what is said (in an exhibit), but for what people may reasonably think is said," Kennedy said.
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Stanford University historian Barton Bernstein, whose research was used for the 60,000 estimate, complained that the Smithsonian was bowing to Congress, which controls its funding.īut museum directors must take public reaction into account when they plan exhibitions, according to National Park Service Director Roger Kennedy, former director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
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Veterans groups believe what had been the conventional wisdom that the death toll would have been much higher, about 230,000. One major point of controversy was the exhibit's estimate that dropping the bomb prevented the deaths of some 60,000 U.S.