″We are encouraged, but the key is the end product,″ said Jack Giese, an association spokesman. Reducing the size of an exhibit section that dealt with the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the next 50 years.Īnother veterans group, the Air Force Association, said it will wait until revisions are complete before making a judgment. For example, the Smithsonian will reduce the number of ground-level photographs of the mushroom-shaped clouds that followed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from seven or eight to four. Toning down some exhibits veterans called overly graphic and redundant. Adding language noting that Truman administration estimates of the casualties that would result from an invasion of Japan, if the bomb didn’t end the war, ranged from 31,000 to 1 million. ″We hope to send them a copy of a revised script early next week.″ ″Some we accepted right over the table, and others we’ve had to go back and research and rewrite,″ Fetters said Friday. ″But we have come prepared to discuss the historical record in detail.″Īs a result of the meetings, the Smithsonian has agreed to make some changes and will continue to listen to other suggestions, said Mike Fetters, an Air and Space Museum spokesman.
″We’re not rubes and they know we’re not rubes and they’ve never treated us like rubes,″ Dagley said Thursday.
Museum officials also have been speaking with veterans groups. 23, the Senate unanimously passed a non-binding resolution calling the exhibit ″revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans.″Īs the uproar continued, the Smithsonian last month announced that it would broaden the scope of the exhibit with a display on how Americans experienced World War II. Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay during the bombing, denounced it as ″a damn big insult,″ and on Feb.
The display will mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing, which destroyed more than half of Hiroshima and killed up to 100,000 Japanese in August 1945.Īfter seeing an early draft of the exhibit’s script last year, veterans groups complained that it was too sympathetic to the Japanese and portrayed them as victims of American aggression.īrig. The front 56 feet of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb used in wartime, is scheduled to go on display in May 1995 at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.