
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 30, 1994                   TAG: 9409020024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

SMITHSONIAN TO REVISE ATOMIC BOMB EXHIBIT

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 atomic bombs 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.

``We felt that their concerns were valid, and we think this new exhibit - coupled with changes within the original exhibition - addresses those concerns,'' said Martin Harwit, the museum's director.

The addition, tentatively titled ``The War in the Pacific: An American Perspective,'' will focus on the ways that Americans experienced the Pacific War, both on the battlefield and the home front, the museum said.

by CNB