The Enola Gay Controversy

A detailed Summary of The Enola Gay Controversy

Historians face many difficulties in their drive to put together the pieces of the past. Two of these problems are hagiography and presentism. These two issues are one of the factors that led to the controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit, and its eventual cancellation.

Hagiography is the tendency to glorify an event, as a sort of worship. It seems that the Air Force Association, some Veterans' groups and some members of the United states Congress fall into this historical trap. The Enola Gay exhibit was intended to be put on display for the 50th anniversary of the day the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Japan. Some people thought of the exhibit as strictly a commemoration for the American troops who died and those that are still alive. It seems that they had no interest in telling Japan's side of the story. In The Journal of American History (December 1995), Richard H. Kohn says that: "The United States government, like other national governments in the last two centuries, has used the memory of war to construct the identity and to build the cohesion of the modern nation-state". This suggests that the memory of war has been intentionally used, and maybe even glorified in order to bring the United States together.

Finally, it was felt that the whole exhibit was designed to portray the Japanese as the victims by means of questioning whether the war would have ended without dropping the bomb. Richard H. Kohn states that: "Nearly every section of the exhibit that followed would contribute, directly or by juxtaposition, to doubts not only about the necessity and appropriateness of the bomb but about Americans motives, honor, decency, and moral integrity in wreaking such destruction on what the script portrayed as a defeated (but not surrendering) enemy". To question the morals of people and to question the necessity of an act of that magnitude, fifty years later, can not be accurately done.

While it can be difficult to avoid hagiography and/or presentism, it can and should be done. Viewing hagiography as one extreme and presentism as another extreme-a "good" historian should fall somewhere in the middle. In the case of the Enola Gay exhibit, each side of the issue could accuse the other of being guilty of hagiography or presentism. The historians behind the Enola Gay exhibit would accuse the AFA, and its supporters, of hagiography. While, on the other hand, the AFA, and its supporters, would accuse the historians behind the Enola Gay of presentism. David Thelen explains: "The debate over the Enola Gay exhibition brought to the surface an even more fundamental issue: What is or ought to be the relationship between what happened in the past and how we interpret and present history in the present?" This sums up the whole issue, do we view histor

Some common words found in the essay are:
Enola Gay, Kohn Nearly, Senator Stevens, David Thelen, Atomic Bomb, Kohn United, War II, Americans Japanese, , Smithsonian Smithsonian, enola gay, gay exhibit, enola gay exhibit, commonly accepted, bomb dropped, richard kohn, hagiography presentism, historians enola gay, world war, afa supporters, war ii, atomic bomb, potentially dangerous future, commonly accepted viewpoint, world war ii,

Approximate Word count = 1047
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History