Some may say the National Air and Space Museum was caving in to political pressure when it announced its decision last week to scale back its planned exhibit of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. But that would be too easy.
The decision to simply display the famous bomber's fuselage and show a video of its crew was actually a reasonable compromise given the intense and contradictory emotions stirred by America's entry into the nuclear age.
This exhibit had been the subject of a heated year-long debate over how the museum would deal with the justification for the bombing and its aftermath. Veterans claimed it offered a revisionist perspective that painted America as the aggressor and the Japanese as innocent victims. Eighty-one members of Congress, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, called for firing the Air and Space Museum's director, Martin Harwit. Congress may still hold hearings on the matter.
We empathize with the museum's original goal of making this year's 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima an occasion for reflection. Since Hiroshima, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has become an ominous threat to peace. The historic Enola Gay aircraft symbolizes the nightmarish uncertainty of the nuclear age.
Yet the Smithsonian erred in important ways in planning its exhibit. Officials tried to make events of 1945 politically correct by the standards of 1995. That was bound to arouse the ire of anyone old enough to recall Americans' reaction to the news that the bomb had rendered an invasion of Japan unnecessary. Many World War II veterans fervently believe the bomb saved their lives. Many non-revisionist historians agree.
America's use of the bomb and the consequences which flowed from it will always be tinged by ambiguity. Yes, it won the war, but it also raised the horror and savagery of modern warfare to new levels. In hindsight it's easy -- and probably wrong -- to second-guess the political and military leaders who bore the burden of that awesome decision. As Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman conceded, this was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion.
"In this important anniversary year, veterans and their families were expecting, and rightly so, that the nation would honor and commemorate their valor and sacrifice," he said. "They were not looking for analysis, and, frankly, we did not give enough thought to the intense feelings such an analysis would evoke."