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? > >-- > O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/ > - ~ -~~~~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap! > / \ (_) (_) / | \ > | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory > \ / Bitnet: [log in to unmask] > - - Internet: [log in to unmask] > ~ SPAN/Hepnet: 43009::HIGGINS [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 [log in to unmask] (203) 432-9891/9816(fax)