Full Essay:Ryan Farley
Dear Martin,
(1) As Secretary of the Smithsonian, I would like to express my gratitude to you for all your attempts to bring a more reflective view to the National Air and Space Museum’s exhibits. In particular, I would like to recognize your efforts involving “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II.” I know that for the past seven years your time commitment to this project has been great, and you are to be commended for it. Your involvement with this venture has been an honest effort when people on both sides of the issue have sometimes been less than honest. After having read the most recent revision of the “Last Act,” I feel that I must express my concerns about the future of this exhibit. Ordinarily, I would prefer to discuss this with you personally, however, as you know I am on vacation in Munich, Germany attending Oktoberfest with our mutual friend Senator Edward Gallagher of Pennsylvania. Both of our families had this vacation planned for well over a year. It was the senator who suggested I write you this letter to express my thoughts.
(2) Before I get into my suggestions, I would like to point out that you have not been well served by certain members of your staff. Confidential, internal memos were leaked to the Air Force Association that caused the project to be blemished from its inception. Whoever included the quote, “For most Americans … it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism,” owes you a sincere apology. This quote became the mantra, which brought the veterans groups together with congressmen from both parties in protest of the original “Crossroads” script. Although this quote was removed from the original draft, it was not erased from the minds of the veterans.
(3) We could have also chosen a different time to pursue a reflective look at the horrors of nuclear war. Although the Enola Gay played a crucial role in ending World War II, attempts to dovetail the fiftieth commemoration of the end of the war to a critical look at the horrors of nuclear destruction created a bigger problem than was anticipated. We should have been more sensitive to the feelings of the people who were looking forward to commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the ending of the war with their families.
(4) I’ve only been Secretary for a short time; therefore I don’t feel comfortable giving you a specific order concerning the direction that the exhibit should take. I am familiar with the relationship between the Smithsonian and the Enola Gay and recognize that problems existed before you became Director of the NASM. I believe that in 1949 we should not have accepted possession of the Enola Gay and once we had possession we should have taken better care of it. I also feel that it would have been best to follow General Tibbetts’s suggestion in handing the plane over to him in 1980. However, this is in the past and cannot be changed. You have invested a great amount of time and effort in this project and I ask you: Where do we go from here?
(5) I acknowledge your hard work and feel that you deserve one more opportunity to negotiate with the veterans groups. Before you pursue this last negotiation may I make a few suggestions regarding the script you will present to the veterans. First, a hard deadline must be set for script approval in order for the exhibit to be ready on time. I recommend November 15, 1994. I know that you and your staff have scrutinized the scripts from beginning to end. You also invited a wide range of experts who helped make many improvements and changes. As an ex-Marine I have had experiences with veterans groups, and I feel that these people are stalling hoping you’ll run out of time. I don’t believe that they will approve any revised script that will be presented to them.
(6) In order to have the best chance for approval, you must stay away from the controversy involving the casualty numbers. It would be a great waste of your time and effort to pursue this topic further. The Air Force Association will never give in on the number of estimated casualties on both sides had the actual invasion occurred. Both the Smithsonian and the AFA know there were approximately eighty-thousand killed at Hiroshima and another thirty-thousand killed at Nagasaki. You will not convince the veterans that there would have been less than that total amount killed had the U.S. invaded Japan. If by some great negotiating tactic on your part you do get the veterans to agree, it will result in a pyrrhic victory for the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian should never be lowered to the level of speculating on estimated casualty numbers of a non-event. In spite of my concerns you have earned the right to follow the revision path one more time. I want you to keep in mind that if we are not where we want to be on November 15th, we must change course.
(7) If the deadline passes, we must follow a simpler path. We could take General Tibbetts’s suggestion of presenting the Enola Gay alone with a plaque that says in his own words, “ This is the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb.” The NASM has done this with a plane of the Wright brothers and “The Spirit of St. Louis,” so precedent has been set. None of the veterans groups would dare go against General Tibbetts. He is their quiet giant. If this simplification were to become the course of action, I would suggest that the critical look at the effects of nuclear war be addressed but sometime in the future.
(8) Time is running out. The deadline is approaching, and we must soon make a decision on what direction the exhibit is going. If you think one more attempt at a revision is warranted, I will support you. However, be aware that time is of the essence. When we first met you expressed that your job as director of the National Air and Space Museum is your “dream job”. In the short time I have been Secretary of the Smithsonian, I have come to have similar feelings about my job. Neither one of us should take these dream jobs for granted.
Sincerely,
I. Michael Heyman
Paragraphs:
Mike F
In light of your ardent interest, I would like to request your hands-on assistance in compiling a coffee-table book and video series to accompany the exhibit. The publications could have a much broader focus than the exhibit because these formats offer a much more flexible workspace. In a joint venture between the Smithsonian and various veteran groups the project would be multifaceted and could accommodate many of the Air Force Association’s recommendations that could not be used in the exhibit itself. Encouraging visitors to purchase the publications would put the “Last Act” in better historical context. Both in terms of its place in the Pacific theater of World War II, as well as American involvement beyond the dropping of the bomb itself. As with most of the publications of this type, our intent is to go beyond the exhibit and present the visitor something that they might not have taken into account while browsing our galleries.
Katie
The Smithsonian would like to add that the object of criticism in “The Crossroads” and “Last Act” is not the United States, but war. War is inherently horrible and evil. It has a character of its own that is independent of the countries engaged in it. Your reference to an “anti-American” tone in the “Last Act” is anything but that. The reason there are more Japanese causality pictures than American pictures is because the atomic bomb was dropped on two Japanese cities, resulting in mass civilian casualties. Society must know what war, especially nuclear war, entails if we want to avoid it in the future. Showing these pictures allows the audience to become part of the exhibit by seeing the horrors of atomic war and understanding that “Japan”, as we now call it, due to revisions, had actual people with faces and names affected. By showing these pictures society can make an emotional connection and begin to own the feelings of war. We did not put these pictures in our scripts to portray America as the “bad guys,” but to show the effects of our actions. It may be a fact that dropping the atomic bomb spared thousands of American lives, but that doesn’t make the thousands of wounded and killed Japanese disappear. The Smithsonian has an obligation to get that point across to people who have no idea about the horror the atomic bomb shed on Japan.
Ryan M
We did not correct the exhibit because we caved in to pressure from veterans and the AFA; rather we rewrote part of the text to represent both sides of the war objectively. Our efforts are aimed at educating and telling the truth; we are not just creating controversy. We took this idea and realized that they were right; the exhibit is unfair in certain aspects. The changes do not take away from the effectiveness of the exhibit to tell the Japanese story of those who lost their lives. For example, sections in the Last Act entitled “Tokyo In Flames” and “Massive Destruction” speak about the horrible damage that the United States rendered to the Japanese. One section entitled “Systematic Destruction” contains pictures of flames resulting from air raids on Japanese towns. The counterpart to this section in the first exhibit contained no pictures at all. The horrors that were done to the Japanese are still portrayed in the Last Act.