The Policy Hole

The Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, held from June 1995 to May 1998, commemorated the role of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In its original form, the display challenged conservative views of U.S. military power and victory over Japan. Public controversy grew over the remorseful tone of its analysis, and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian, under intense political pressure, dropped the planned display in favor of one decidedly less controversial. Hence the three-year exhibition eschewed more difficult analytic questions regarding the world's first nuclear event in favor of bland memorialization and a more politique rendering of an American accomplishment. 1