THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 30, 1994 TAG: 9408300417
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARCY GORDON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Bending to pressure from lawmakers and veterans' groups, the Smithsonian Institution has agreed to broaden the scope of a planned exhibit on the American bombing of Japan in World War II.
The expanded exhibit will detail events in the Pacific war leading to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum said in a statement Monday.
The museum said it was responding to complaints from veterans' groups and military historians that the atomic bomb exhibit lacked balance because it failed to provide adequate explanation of the events leading up to the bombing.
The exhibit, which will include the front fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, already had been revised once in response to the criticism.
Earlier this month, Rep. Peter Blute, R-Mass., led two dozen members of Congress who complained that the exhibit wrongly portrays Japan as an innocent victim of the atomic bomb and urged changes.
After the Enola Gay dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic raid on Nagasaki three days later led to Japan's surrender and the war's end. The original exhibit includes graphic photographic depictions of the destruction of more than half of Hiroshima and the deaths of some 130,000 Japanese. Now, to get to the exhibit titled ``The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,'' visitors first will pass through the Pacific war show, consisting of about 50 photographs and covering 4,000 square feet. The added exhibit also will include a Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat, described as the most successful carrier-based fighter used in the war.
The Enola Gay has been accessible to the public for years at a Smithsonian facility outside of Washington. But the exhibition of the front fuselage in the facility on the Washington Mall will put the plane on view in the world's most-visited museum, which logged more than 8 million visitors last year.
The exhibit is scheduled to open in about nine months. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on
Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, is now at a Smithsonian facility in
Silver Hill, Md.
by CNB