The protests by American veterans groups, who said the original plans for a vast exploration of the Hiroshima bombing portrayed the Japanese as victims and the Americans as aggressors, led the Smithsonian's leadership to back off from its grand plans and forced the resignation of the museum's director, Martin O. The bomb bay doors are still open, as if they never swung shut again that morning a half century ago.īut in many ways, Washington's most argued about, most crowded exhibit of the year is also the most diminished display in Smithsonian history, a testament to the emotional power the Enola Gay still conveys.
After two years of unending controversy, the Enola Gay has finally arrived in downtown Washington, sitting atop a copy of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima 50 years ago today. Louis and the Apollo capsule that it hardly looks threatening, though it is so huge that the curators of the National Air and Space Museum had to leave the wings off. IT sits so quietly in gleaming splendor inside an exhibition hall near the Spirit of St.
