Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 28, 1995 TAG: 9506290006
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The focus is on hardware, not the nuances of history. It's about a big shiny plane and its determined crew. It's like a passage from a Tom Clancy novel, converted to three dimensions.
As for the destruction of Hiroshima: ``I really decided to leave it more to the imagination,'' said Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman at a news conference Tuesday attended by at least 26 TV camera crews and a U.S. Park Police SWAT team on the lookout for trouble.
Fifty years ago this summer, the B-29 named after the mother of its pilot dropped the atom bomb that instantly destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima and, with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki three days later, hastened the end of World War II. The Enola Gay's trip to the northwest corner of the Air and Space Museum has been far more tortuous than the flight it took the morning of Aug. 6, 1945.
For years, the Smithsonian Institution had the plane and was steadily restoring it to vintage condition. But the decision to display it as part of a lengthy contemplation of the birth of the atomic age, and on the anniversary of the end of the war, proved disastrous. A 500-page rough draft drew furious protest from veterans groups, who contended it ignored Japanese wartime atrocities and unfairly questioned the decision to drop the bomb. The Smithsonian received more than 30,000 pieces of angry mail. The exhibit script was revised four times. Finally, amid a debate over how many Americans might have died in an invasion of Japan, Heyman scrapped the show and replaced it with something far simpler.
``I don't believe that this is a glorification of nuclear weapons,'' said the bow-tied Heyman. ``It says, `This is the Enola Gay. It dropped the bomb that ended the war.' It doesn't take a position on the morality of it.''
Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay, sent a letter of congratulations after touring the exhibit, saying he was ``pleased and proud'' of it.
Peace activists, meanwhile, held a news conference to denounce the museum's actions. There are plans for an all-day protest today.
Air and Space Museum Director Martin Harwit resigned earlier this year in the wake of the flap.
The original exhibit would have explored the long-contentious question of whether the bomb was needed to end the war. The finished exhibit skips the issue.
by CNB