On 19 Oct 94 12:52:00 -0600, Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey wrote:
 
>Another shot fired in the *Enola Gay* battle.  The appended
>announcement appeared on the History of Technology list, where
>Gabrielle Hecht  had forwarded it from a labor history list.  (Pardon
>me if you've seen it before, but I thought it would be of interest to
>MUSEUM-L readers.)
>
>Are the staff of the National Air and Space Museum such jingoistic
>fanatics that they need to be lectured by "peace and justice
>organization representatives" about the horrors of hot war and the
>unfortunate effects of the Cold War?
>
>--
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>   - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / /   / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
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> |       |     Bill Higgins   Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
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[Bill Higgins' enclosure deleted]
 
Bill:  I thought the problem was the exact opposite:  That veterans groups
and others thought that NASM had been about to create an exhibit that
was overly sympathetic to the Japanese and overly critical of the US.
They put pressure on the Museum to correct it by putting Hiroshima in
the larger context of Japanese aggression as the cause of at least the
Pacific-Asian theaters of World War II and the horrible human suffering
that unleashed.  (Also, I assume that even now -- let alone at the
time, when the ghastly experience of Okinawa was fresh in people's
minds -- not everyone is convinced that Japan would have surrendered
without a very costly invasion had the bombs not been dropped; whether the
invasion would have been as costly -- in both American and Japanese
lives -- as Stimson and others estimated is another question.
Ken Yellis
Assistant Director for Public Programs
Peabody Museum of Natural History
170 Whitney Avenue
Box 208118
New Haven, CT 06520-8118
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(203) 432-9891/9816(fax)