An exhibit denied : lobbying the history of Enola Gay / Martin Harwit.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harwit, Martin, 1931-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enola Gay (Bomber)--Exhibitions--Political aspects.

Enola Gay (Bomber).

National Air and Space Museum--Exhibitions--Political aspects.

National Air and Space Museum.

Military policy.

Atomic bomb--Moral and ethical aspects.

Atomic bomb.

Exhibitions.

Hiroshima-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945--Exhibitions.

Hiroshima-shi (Japan).

World War, 1939-1945--Japan--Hiroshima-shi.

World War, 1939-1945.

United States--Military policy--Moral and ethical aspects.

United States.

Public history.

Physical Description:

xxv, 477 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Copernicus, [1996]

Summary:

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 (pages 435-468) and index.

ISBN:

0387947973

OCLC:

34745931