Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 9, 1994 TAG: 9405090092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM WEBB KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Next year, another famous airplane will be added. It's the Enola Gay, the legendary B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and brought a swift and terrible end to World War II.
Unlike the proud display accorded those other famous aircraft, however, officials at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum have more chilling plans for the Enola Gay. And that rankles a growing number of World War II veterans who wish to evoke the pride of their wartime sacrifice - not have it overshadowed by gruesome photos of dead children and radiation victims.
Ben Nicks, 75, was a B-29 pilot who flew his last mission the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. He is delighted the Smithsonian is painstakingly restoring the Enola Gay and plans to exhibit it again.
"The Enola Gay, the aircraft itself, is nothing but a piece of tin," said Nicks. "But as a symbol, as a reminder to the generations who followed World War II and to whom it's only a memory, we hope that the symbol is one that reflects credit on us."
But this is not quite what he expected. According to plans, the plane is to be exhibited with charred artifacts from Hiroshima's Ground Zero: carbonized remains of a schoolgirl's meal, melted religious artifacts, a clock forever frozen at 8:15 a.m.
Along with proud memorabilia from the 509th bomb group, there will be ghastly photos of Japanese women and children, representing some of the 100,000 who died from the fireball on Aug. 6, 1945, or from the slow poisoning of radiation.
But most troubling to Nicks and other veterans is their belief that the exhibit slights their sacrifice. Some even felt Americans would be portrayed as the Bad Guys - a charge Smithsonian officials vigorously deny.
"What we're really looking at here is a reluctance to really tell the whole story," insisted Tom Crouch, chairman of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum Aeronautics Department. "They want to stop the story when the bomb leaves the bomb bay. This is an exhibit which goes beyond that, including what happens when it hits the ground."
A full year before the exhibit opens, the controversy shows how the shock waves from Hiroshima reverberate still. Was dropping the bomb a deliberate slaughter of 100,000 Japanese civilians and the birth of nuclear terror - or a godsend that ended the world's bloodiest war and saved American (and Japanese) lives by the hundreds of thousands? Was it both?
The Smithsonian wants visitors to answer those questions for themselves. The museum intends to present context, history, facts, multiple viewpoints - and no moral judgments.
Yet, for Ben Nicks, and for thousands of surviving veterans like him, there's an aspect that is troubling.
To win World War II, the nation demanded - and received - immense sacrifice in a black-and-white, life-or-death struggle.
Today, from a distance of two generations, even The Good War contains shades of gray.
Tom Crouch and Michael Neufeld are two top Smithsonian officials, and they know all about one-sided, biased museum exhibits. Try Japan's Hiroshima Memorial Peace Museum.
If you visit that museum, they say, you'd hear how Japanese civilians were incinerated in 1945 by the United States' atomic bomb. What you wouldn't find is any real mention that Japan was the war's aggressor, that it attacked a nation at peace by bombing Pearl Harbor. Nor does the museum mention years of Japanese aggression, brutality and war crimes throughout Asia.
"I'm really bothered, angered, by the way that the Japanese find it so difficult to put wartime issues in real context," Crouch said. "Their view is to portray themselves as victims.
"As I listen to the folks who criticize this (Smithsonian exhibit), I hear something similar to that," Crouch added. "There's real discomfort about looking at destruction on the ground . . . I hear critics saying, `Don't tell part of the story.' "
Smithsonian officials say they'll tell it all - Japan's aggression, the scientific challenges to building the bomb, the political and military decision to drop it, the story of the Enola Gay crew led by Col. Paul Tibbets, the destruction at Ground Zero, the bomb's nuclear legacy.
The Smithsonian Institution is where America's story is told. On the mall between the Capitol and Washington Monument, the Smithsonian is both America's national museum and its collective pride. Its collection includes dinosaur bones and space capsules, the Hope Diamond and the ruby slippers.
Still, the Enola Gay's atomic mission is troublesome. Even the Smithsonian's critics are quick to acknowledge that.
"I don't think anybody is looking for glorification," argued John Correll, the editor of Air Force Magazine. "We certainly would recognize that the mission of the Enola Gay was grim."
Correll has obtained a draft copy of the Smithsonian script. Then he did a body count. He counted 49 photos of Japanese casualties, and three photos of American casualties.
That, he says, is not evenhanded. Where are the photos of such Japanese atrocities as the Bataan death march? The use of Chinese and Koreans as slave laborers? The brutal mistreatment of American prisoners of war?
"I think people do expect balance and fairness," Correll said. "What sort of impression do people come away with when they see this? The graphic photos of the horrors of war are all Japanese victims. How much do the people who go to this know about what happened in the 1930s and 1940s? How aware are they of the casualties that Americans suffered?"
by CNB