An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay
Martin Harwit'sAn Exhibit Deniedis a cautionary tale about what happens when politics intrudes on the objective quest for truth. The year 1995 marked the 50th anniversary of the flight of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In preparation for that anniversary, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum began work on an exhibit that would not only reprise the events surrounding the bombing, but would also examine the bomb's impact on people--both Japanese and American, civilian and military. Under the guidance of Martin Harwit, a former professor of astrophysics at Cornell University, the planned exhibit included, among other things, Japanese civilian artifacts from the bombing and documents showing that high-ranking military leaders such as Dwight D. Eisenhower had grave doubts about dropping the bomb. Most controversially, the exhibit did not support the commonly held belief that the bombing saved countless lives by preventing a land invasion, and this is what eventually led to its downfall. Harwit pointed out that there was no way of knowing how the war would have ended without bombs; the American Legion national commander demanded that President Clinton shut the exhibit down.What followed was a donnybrook of epic proportions as the media, the Republican-dominated Congress, and veterans' lobbying groups all portrayed Harwit's attempt to present the Enola Gay in an objective light as antipatriotic, left-wing propaganda. Eventually, Harwit was dismissed and the Enola Gay exhibit was drastically rewritten. InAn Exhibit Denied, Martin Harwit once again brings his scientific method to the telling of this story, presenting both sides of the argument and letting the facts speak for themselves. What those facts tell us is truly disturbing.