An exhibit denied
Subtitle: lobbying the history of Enola Gay
By: Martin Harwit.
Publisher: Copernicus
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 477
Subjects: Enola Gay (Bomber) -- Exhibitions -- Political aspects; National Air and Space Museum -- Exhibitions -- Political aspects; World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan -- Hiroshima-shi; Atomic bomb -- Moral and ethical aspects; Public history; Hiroshima-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945 -- Exhibitions; United States -- Military policy -- Moral and ethical aspects
Description: A national frenzy, fanned by lobbyists and the media, thwarted the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's attempt to mount an exhibition featuring the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Martin Harwit, the director of the museum at the time, recounts the decade-long effort to restore the Enola Gay, the largest restoration project ever undertaken by the museum; recalls the help and support initially provided by General Tibbets and a small.

Band of men he had commanded on the atomic missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki; shows how a handful of World War II veterans became disillusioned and began to oppose the museum's display of the aircraft; and describes how these men succeeded in calling on powerful veterans' organizations, aerospace lobbyists and congressmen for help in their cause. All the while, a separate drama was unfolding in Japan, where the prospects of an exhibition of the Enola Gay, in a national.

Museum in the heart of Washington, raised an entirely different set of concerns.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 435-468) and index.