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Linenthal, who was on the advisory board of the Enola Gay exhibit. However, the museum felt “ambivalence about the plane’s eventual display,” described historian Edward T. Restoration efforts by the Smithsonian started on December 5, 1984. The veterans formed “the Committee for the Restoration and Proud Display of the Enola Gay” to raise funds. Their motivations, at this time, stemmed primarily from the poor condition of the aircraft. In the 1980s, members of the 509 th Composite Group asked for a proper restoration of the aircraft. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage facility for NASM. In 1961, the Enola Gay was fully disassembled and moved to the Paul E. There its wings began to rust and vandals even damaged the plane. Notably, from 1953 to 1960, its home was Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. A fiery controversy ensued that demonstrated the competing historical narratives regarding the decision to drop the bomb.įollowing World War II, the Enola Gay had been moved around from location to location. “An experience that has taught me to appreciate the smaller things in life, instead of the finer things in life.For the 50 th anniversary of the end of World War II, the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) proposed an exhibition that would include displaying the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that was used to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.I’ve created a space for both truths in my mind. It’s a fact, but it doesn’t take away from his writings about Nature (at least to me). There is, without a doubt, writings by Emerson that do not mix well with our current standards for being non-racist. My professor was amused by my protests, and when I think of the class now, I’m not as outraged. It seemed unfair to me to place modern expectations and standards on those of the past. I, as an English major from GSU who loved all the Transcedentalists, laughed at the idea and argued in-class that it was unlikely that someone who was an abolitionist could be so accurately described as racist.
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We read a book titled, The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter, and one chapter argued the racism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also reminds me of a race class that I took at KSU in the American Studies M.A. It is a privileged standpoint, 20/20, and I think that is something we have to be careful of in our work as historians. My 90-something-year-old grandmother listened as I described (in probably too much detail for lunch!) the horrors of the bomb, and when I was finished, she exclaimed, unscathed, “Well, I believe it was the right thing to do! It ended the war!” My father laughed at the generational divide between us, and when I felt I couldn’t argue with her (not just as my elder but because she might have had a point!), I later reflected that had I been around during the war, I might have felt precisely as she did. I came away convinced that dropping the bomb was reprehensible, and shortly after viewing it, I shared my thoughts with my family over dinner one afternoon. Interesting, indeed, that they don’t appear to reference the bomb’s lasting effects beyond unconditional surrender.Ī quick Google search has proved fruitless, but there was a documentary I saw several years ago about the dropping of the bombs that featured animated vignettes and was one of the most powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen. Wow, Claire! Thanks for looking this up for us. It’s been 24 years since the controversy of the original exhibit, yet I feel that Kohn’s article is still relevant, both to the Enola Gay itself as well as, like Steven pointed out in his post, the debate over what to about the Confederate monuments. I find this disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. I’d like to see the physical exhibit itself, but as I don’t have easy access, I would imagine that it’s in the same vein as what you can find online. The Enola Gay’s page on the Smithsonian’s website offers both a summary and a longer description about the Enola Gay and its involvement in dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but offers nothing on the bomb’s effects beyond Japan’s unconditional surrender. The (in)famous plane is part of the World War II Aviation exhibit and went on display in 2003. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, a separate facility from the main National Air and Space Museum. The Kohn reading was much more informative and interesting and it got me thinking, ‘so what happened after the exhibit was pulled?’ After a quick Google search, I was slightly surprised that the Enola Gay is in fact on display at the Steven F. I had been aware of the controversy of the Enola Gay exhibit, having read a short article about it when I was an undergrad.