THE ENOLA GAY IN AMERICAN MEMORY:A STUDY OF RHETORIC IN HISTORICAL CONTROVERSY

by

SATORU AONUMA

DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Graduate School

of Wayne State University,

Detroit, Michigan

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

2005

MAJOR: COMMUNICATION

Approved by:

______________________________ Advisor Date

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

UMI Number: 3198673

31986732006

Copyright 2005 byAonuma, Satoru

UMI MicroformCopyright

All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road

P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346

All rights reserved.

by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.

COPYRIGHT BY

SATORU AONUMA

2005

All Rights Reserved

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost important, this dissertation would never have been completed

without generous support and encouragement of the following people: Dr.

George Ziegelmueller, my main dissertation advisor; Dr. Bill Trapani; Dr. Bernard

Brock; and Dr. Gordon Neavill. They are sources of my inspiration and, more

important, they incidentally are on my dissertation committee. I would especially

like to thank Dr. Ziegelmueller for his professional guidance as well as personal

support in completing the manuscript. I would also like to thank Dr. Sandra

Berkowitz (now at Maine), my former advisor, for her encouragement and insight

in developing my thought on the subject. I sincerely wish her well.

My sincere gratitude also goes to the graduate faculty, administrative staff,

and friends I had in the Department of Communication at Wayne State: Dr. Matt

Seeger; Dr. Mary Garrett; Dr. Larry Miller (formerly of Wayne State); Dr. Jack

Kay; and Joe, Beth, Chris, Omar, Dianne, Helen and Sharon. I also owe a great

deal to my mentors at the University of Iowa where I was first disciplined and/or

emancipated as a student of communication: Dr. John Lyne (now at Pittsburgh);

late Dr. Michael McGee; Dr. Bruce Gronbeck; Dr. David Hingstman; Dr. Takis

Poulakos; and Dr. John Peters. I also thank members of debate teams I

associated with at Wayne State and Iowa for sharing fun and joy.

In addition, this study is indebted to the following individuals for their

insights and assistance in locating and obtaining research materials: Cesar

Quinones of the Smithsonian Institutions Office of Public Affairs; Keith Gorman

and Ellen Alers of the Smithsonian Institution Archives; Ted Yorkshire and

iii

Pearlie Draughn of the Air Force Association; Dr. Robert Newman; and Philip

Dalton.

Finally, I thank my parents for their understanding and support and Kanda

University of International Studies and Sano Gakuen for granting me a sabbatical

and research fund that enabled me to complete my doctoral work, including this

dissertation.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMETS.............................................................................................. ii

CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 1 Introduction.............................................................................1

CHAPTER 2 From Cabinets of Curosities to Political Forums: The

Metamorphosis of American Museums ......................................................28

CHAPTER 3 Locating the Enola Gay Controversy: Its Time and

Place ................................................................................................................43

CHAPTER 4 From The Crossroads to The Last Act: Putting an End

to the Smithsonians Critical Commemoration...........................................73

CHAPTER 5 Conclusions....................................................................... 116

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 153

ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. 180

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT................................................................. 182

1CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Prefer to leave behind you as a memorial images of your character ratherthan of your body. . . Do not suffer your life to be at once wholly blotted out,but since you were allotted a perishable body, seek to leave behind animperishable memorial of your soul. (p. 61)

Isocrates (1928b), To Nicocles

The Americans are a good-natured people, kindly, helpful to one another,disposed to take a charitable view even of wrongdoers. Their angersometimes flames up, but the fire is soon extinct. (p. 285)

James Bryce (1921), The American Commonwealth

Americas social and historical ignorance is so great that it constitutes athreat to American society. It is as if our society were distorting its ownmemory. This, it may be well pointed out, is the mark of an irrational man aswell as of an irrational society. . . One sign of a sick society is the failure tojudge the past in the present, to distinguish the political realities that in thepast tore fabric of the society.

This mythology is not created by a secret elite, it is not taught andperpetuated by a clique of professors and publishers. It is a mythology bydefault and neglect. (p. 218)Richard Means (1969/1970), The Ethical Imperative: The Crisis inAmerican Values

In January 30, 1995, I. Michael Heyman, the Secretary of the Smithsonian

Institution who assumed that office only a few months earlier, announced the

cancellation of a long planned special exhibit. The exhibit, which was to have

opened at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C. in

May of that year, was to have marked the 50th anniversary of the end of World War

II. A significant feature of the planned exhibit was the display of the fuselage of the

Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress from which the worlds first atomic

bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. According to the (official)

2American history of World War II, this historic mission forced Japan to surrender

and eventually ended the war. Since the Smithsonians acquisition of the Enola

Gay, the aircraft spent most of its time at the Institutes storage and restoration

facility outside the Washington Mall and had not been placed on public display.

The planned exhibit got into serious trouble, however, before it was actually

put into place, and that trouble eventually forced the Smithsonian to give up its

whole planning. In early 1994, when the NASM curators released the first draft for

the exhibit, critics immediately took issue with it. The critics harsh reactions to the

script initiated and aroused widespread public controversy. Overall, the

controversy involved philosophical, political and personal concerns, and objections

were raised by diverse individuals and groups who had vested interest in the

history of the atomic bombing and the end of World War II. The issues involved in

the controversy were extremely complex. In the planning stage of the exhibit, there

was an issue over what was the appropriate role of public museums. This issue

became even more complex by the fact that NASM had a special mission that

superceded any general philosophical mission of museums in American culture.

While professional historians pressed the NASM curators to provide a more

balanced historical account of the atomic bombing, veteran groups raised totally

different objections to the exhibit, criticizing the Smithsonian that its planned

exhibit failed to commemorate the Enola Gays historic mission appropriately.

Concessions and negotiations between the Smithsonian and its critics

continued for a year, and during the process the script underwent numerous

3corrections and revisions. The controversy also became overtly publicized and

politicized, as the mass media, members of the House of Representatives and the

Senate, and even White House got involved. Realizing that the negotiations were

getting nowhere, the Smithsonian finally called off any further discussions and

froze preparation for the exhibit. At the same time when the cancellation of the

exhibit was officially announce, Martin Harwit, who had been Director of NASM,

offered his resignation. Heyman took over the curatorial authority from the NASMs

original project team, apologized to the critics, and promised that he would be

personally responsible for writing a totally new exhibit plan which would give more

appropriate treatment to the Enola Gay and its historic mission.

This dissertation presents a rhetorical case study of this historic

controversy. This introductory chapter first provides a general framework for the

study and demonstrates its significance, and then moves on to appraise previous

studies that have dealt with this controversy. Following this critical assessment,

the chapter presents specific research questions that this study will seek to

answer, identifies research materials (texts) and describes the analytical strategy

(method) that will be used to answer these questions. The chapter concludes

with an organizational outline, and with brief descriptions of each of the chapters

that will follow.

4Justification for the Study

There are two primary reasons for studying this particular controversy from

a communication and rhetorical perspective. First, the Enola Gay controversy is a

significant discursive manifestation of nuclear memory in post World War II

America. Americans do remember Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) as one significant

episode in their past, and the controversy powerfully demonstrates that their

memory of the bombing takes a form of discursive struggle or cultural memory.

According to Sturken (1997), cultural memory is a kind of communal (American

in the present context) memory which is shared by many but is never collective or

collected; it is a field of contested meaning shared outside the avenues of formal

historical discourse yet is entangled with cultural products and imbued with cultural

meanings (p. 3). As such, cultural memory offers a discursive opportunity in

which Americans interact with cultural elements to produce the concepts of the

nation. . . where both the structures and the fractures of a culture are exposed

(Sturken, 1997, p. 2-3).

The Enola Gay controversy is a troubling episode of American nuclear

domesticity (Brown, 1988). Namely, it is a debate over how to commemorate or

remember-together (Gallagher, 1995) the atomic bombing. The debate took

place exclusively within the American cultural milieu. As many scholars from

diverse disciplines have observed, placing the atomic bombing in the nations

political cultural discourse has always provoked controversy (Gay & Lemmond,

1987; L. Hein & Seldon, 1997). Henry Kissinger once wrote, history is a memory

5of states and it is precisely that history which is controversial. Henriksen (1997)

writes: [T]he [atomic] bombs contested place in American society activated great

discomfort and provided evidence of cultural struggle (p. xiix-xix). For many

Americans, what was at stake in this struggle was not only their history or memory

but also their present and future. On one hand, the atomic bombing was a savior

that ended the Pacific War and saved many of their lives. Had it not been for

Hiroshima, many American military personnel might not have been able to live

through the post war period. Hence, even 35 years after the bombing, Fussell

proclaimed, thank god for the atom bomb (Fussell, 1981).

On the other hand, the symbolic impact of the atomic blast was shocking

even to some Americans. The physical, moral and military impact of the use of

nuclear weapons was so overwhelming that Americans could not but continue to

discuss and talk about its implications and meanings even after 50 years. Current

discourses on the War on Terror and the Iraq War, for instance, would make little

sense without Americas memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the one and only

referent for Ground Zero caused by a weapon of mass destruction. As

Goodnight (1986) notes:

The debate over nuclear weapons continues. . . [T]he nuclear issue is soclosely connected with ultimate issues of human survival and itsconventions are so paradoxical that it persists as a kind of subterraneanrepository of issues out of which public argument will emerge. (p. 409)

The Enola Gay controversy symbolically demonstrates the discursive-

argumentative nature of Americas nuclear memory. It reveals that any public

exhibition regarding the use of the atomic bombs will inevitably be controversial.

6What matters in this controversy is not only the physical effects of atomic weapons

or the history of atomic diplomacy, but it also involves a multiplicity of tensions and

issues that are concerned with past memories as well as present and future

survival in the nuclear age. The Smithsonians eventual cancellation of its own

exhibit further evidences the problems of American nuclear domesticity. The

American publics difficulty in discussing and commemorating within its own

culture, its leaders decision to use nuclear weapons against civilian population

makes the issues that emerged in the controversy worth investigating. Because

the Enola Gay controversy uniquely provided such strong discursive tensions over

the use of nuclear weapons, rhetorical and argumentative analysis of this event is

justified.

Second, the Enola Gay controversy is a discourse about a museum exhibit,

and this discussion warrants study from a rhetorical and communication

perspective. Museums in the United States are significant channels of

communication particularly when it comes to history. For many Americans there

is little contact with the past except at the historic sites, monuments, and

museums (Geist, 1978, p. 64). In the words of Richard Kohn (1996), former

President of the Society for Military History, the controversy over the Smithsonian

exhibit and its subsequent cancellation is the one of the worst tragedies to befall

the public presentation of history in the United States (p. 140). From a

communication perspective, one may be tempted to place the blame for the

cancellation of the exhibit solely on the Smithsonian. The Enola Gay controversy

7can be viewed as an example of communication breakdown caused by the

museums own inability as a public communicator. The exhibit (manu)script was

not adequately prepared when it was presented for review. The Smithsonian failed

to communicate a full (hi)story to its audience. Many critics rejected the script

because they believed it contained errors and inaccuracies that were beyond

correction. The Smithsonians failure to communicate might also be seen as a

case of poor adaptation. The message crafted by NASM was simply not

kairotic, i.e., a discourse that was unfit and improper to a particular occasion and

time (Carter, 1988; Kinneavy, 1986; Sullivan, 1992). The Smithsonian simply

misanalyzed the exigencies presented by the particular rhetorical situation and

the expectations of particular intended audience (Bitzer, 1968). Instead of securing

their support and understanding of important constituents, therefore, the NASM

curators ended up offending them and arousing dissatisfaction and anger.

On the other hand, rhetorical and argumentative factors alone does not fully

explain the significance of the Enola Gay controversy, what Kohn has called the

one of the worst tragedies in the nations public presentation of history. More than

a decade has past since the cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibit, but the

controversy surrounding it still remains a hot topic for many historians and

museum curators (Boyd, 1999; Crane, 1997a, 1997b; Dubin, 1999; Harris, 1995;

White, 1997; Zolberg, 1996). Many of these professionals remain sympathetic to

what the Smithsonian attempted to accomplish with its exhibit. After the

cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibit, John Coatsworth, President of the

8Organization for American Historians (OAH), published a letter in the Wall Street

Journal, in which he lamented the fact that the exhibit had fallen victim to political

pressure and decried the Smithsonians inability to communicate its perspective

on the historical events surrounding the use of the atomic bomb (Coatsworth,

1995). Moreover, the political pressure to cancel the exhibit created a certain

chilling effect. It was reported that many curators are self-censoring for fear of

bring trouble to their doors or losing financial support. Curators around the country

ask themselves: Is a historical exhibit not presentable unless it passes a

congressional litmus test? (Nash et al., 2000, p. 259)

While not all members of the nations museum community endorse each

and every part of the Smithsonians aborted script, manyperhaps mostof them

supported the particular museological approach that the NASM curators

assumed in the development of its Enola Gays presentation ("Controversy

continues," 1995; "Enola Gay update," 1995; A. F. Young, 1994). American

museums have increasingly moved to the forefront in struggles over

representation and over the chronicling, revising, and displaying of the past

(Dubin, 1999, p. 5). For them, there is nothing inherently wrong with museum

controversy. It is, in fact, a part of their normal operations.

For historians and museum professionals, the Enola Gay controversy was

not merely a case of a communication breakdown. What made the controversy

tragic was not the NASM curators poorly written script or their failure to adapt it to

exigencies of the time and place. Rather, the tragedy was that political and public

9critics challenged the Smithsonians museological approach and communicative

intent.

The tragedy is further magnified by the fact that this controversy took place

over an exhibit at NASM, a museum that belongs to the Smithsonian, the nations

premier and most influential cultural institution. As Young (1994) observed, The

furor over Air and Space is unprecedented and is alarming because the

Smithsonian has often been looked to as a pacesetter by other museums. The

museum horrors. . . raise questions that go to the heart of the enterprise of

historical museums in the United States (p. 6).

Thus, the Enola Gay controversy is a significant social phenomenon that

deserves critical study from the perspective of communication and rhetoric. It

reveals a multiplicity of tensions that were deeply entrenched in late 20th century

American political culture. First, the text of the Enola Gay controversy features

persistent issues within Americas nuclear memory. It is these inherent tensions

within its nuclear domesticity that the Smithsonians planned exhibit provoked.

Moreover, the issues that emerged in the controversy also have to do with

problems of communicative acts performed within a specific institutional context; it

was a discourse over a particular museum exhibit, not a speech or

cinematography or televisual representation, that attempted to present a history of

the atomic bombing. It is the intertwining of these issues that makes the Enola Gay

controversy an interesting subject for a critical case study. It is a controversy in

which the past, present, and future of American nuclear memory and the role of

10

American museums were problematized; it is a controversy that calls for both

textual-interpretive, as well as institutional, analyses of public communication.

Literature Review

This section reviews earlier studies of the Enola Gay controversy. Because

this is a rhetorical case study, the section will isolate and discuss studies

undertaken and published within the field of communication and rhetoric, i.e.,

Newman, Proisese, Biesecker, Taylor, and Cripps. Specifically, the review

consists of the following two steps. First, it seeks to identify how earlier

communication and rhetorical studies framed or characterized the controversy,

what issues they perceive as significant and worthy of analyses, and what

conclusions or judgments they made about the controversy. Second, this section

exemplifies limitations found in these previous studies. The section then attempts

to identify questions that remain unanswered by previous scholarship and that this

dissertation will attempt to address.

In Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (1995b) and Enola Gay and the Court of

History (2004), Newman characterizes the Enola Gay controversy primarily as a

debate over history. According to his analysis, the controversy was due to the

Smithsonians (mis)representation of history, particularly with regards to Trumans

decision to use the atomic bombs. He criticized the Smithsonian for basing its

historical presentation of the bombing on what he calls the Hiroshima cult, i.e.,

peaceniks and revisionist historians who attempted to question Trumans

11

decision with insufficient historical evidence. Behind Newmans analysis lies his

firm, a priori conviction that historical evidence shows that the decision to drop the

bomb was unequivocally uncontroversial. For him, therefore, the Enola Gay

controversy was a battle that took place in a court of history and, as such, the

cancellation of the exhibit was logical and welcoming.

Proisise (1997, 1998) frames the Enola Gay controversy similarly, namely

as a debate over a single issue. His characterization of the issue, however,

significantly differs from Newmans. According to Proisises analysis, what made

the Smithsonians planned exhibit controversial was not the misrepresentation of

history by the NASM curators. The controversy, rather, was an unfortunate product

of a tension between history and memory in Americas nuclear domesticity. Put

more precisely, Proisese sees historical scholarship on the side of the

Smithsonian, which directly contradicts Newmans assessment. He claims that the

controversy emerged because critics of NASM deliberately misrecognized

veterans collective memory of the bombing as if it were the objective history.

Thus, unlike Newman, he criticizes the cancellation of the exhibit, as an act of

excommunication. The cancellation, in Proisises view, resulted in the exclusion

of many substantive historical considerations of the atomic attacks from public

space (1998, p. 318).

Biesecker (2003) offers a rhetorical analysis of the Enola Gay controversy

similar to Proisese. She regards memory, as he does, as a singularly important

issue to be explored. Her focus, however, is not exactly on the misrecognition of

12

memory as history but on memory as an uncontestable reification of experience

which becomes the bedrock of identity (p. 113). She finds this to be significant

and problematic, for such memory, as a rhetorical discourse, has a certain

irresistible truth effect, blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, history

and commemoration, and world-disclosing and problem-solving (p. 114). It also

authorizes a certain privileged few to monopolize the past, present, and future,

because it expels any questioning, let alone challenging, of that memory. This is,

according to Biesecker, what exactly happened in the Enola Gay controversy. It is

discourses and voices of a particular reified experience (veterans memory) that

put the Smithsonians exhibit to a halt, and she critiques these discourses by way

of the rhetorical question: Indeed, why? What were conditions of possibility for the

privileging of the Enola Gays pilot and crew? What play of forces set the stage for

this singular authoritative voice to emerge? (p. 113)

For Taylor (1998), what should matter to scholars of communication is not

exactly history or memory in American nuclear domesticity. The primary issue in

the Enola Gay controversy has to do, rather, with problems of visual rhetoric,

more precisely photographic representation, of the atomic bombing in American

culture. In his view, the controversy demonstrates how realism serves as a

medium of conflict between insurgent and counterinsurgent nuclear interests (p.

333). He specifically isolates and analyzes a series of photographs contained in

the Smithsonians planned exhibit and contends that these images constituted a

significant factor that provoked a controversy, for they represented realism of the

13

ruins of Hiroshima, particularly of (nuclear) bodies. He argued that the rhetorical

impact of these visual images was underestimated by the NASM curators.

None of the above, however, is the central focus for Cripps (1998) study.

He finds the central locus of the controversy not in the Smithsonians planned

exhibits discourses over history, memory, or photographic realism, but rather in

representations of these discourses by broadcast journalism. Cripps thus

contends that one significant decisive factor that helped to spur the controversy

and made it unmanageable to the Smithsonian was the visual rhetoric of

television news which is rooted in the immediacy that all photography transmits

and that [t]his very charged immediacy. . . precludes analysis by viewers, by

striving for an affective rather than more cognitive response (p. 78). Cripps

analyzes the coverage of the controversy in major network news programs as well

as (commercial) breaks between clips and segments, and concludes that these

televisual representations oversimplified and profoundly altered the debate. The

issue, for Cripps concern, was problems inherent in the broadcast media that

choose not to report the real issues at stake, and these made the Smithsonian a

victim of the shrunken, indeed atrophied, American span nurtured by the brevity

of television (p. 78).

Needless to say, each of these studies provides some insight into the Enola

Gay controversy. Diverse analytical methods employed in these studies show that

the controversy involved problematics of communication and rhetoric that were

multifaceted. Each scholar contextualized the Enola Gay controversy within a

14

perspective of communication and rhetoric of his or her own choosing and offered

an analysis appropriate to that contextualization. For Newman, the issue at stake

in the controversy was the Smithsonians misrepresentation of the history of the

bombing, whereas, for Proisese, it was a misrecognition of memory as history.

Biesecker concludes that the controversy exposes rhetorical problems of truth

effects caused by memory of some privileged few and their reified experience. But

according to Taylor and Cripps, the problem had more to do with the rhetorical

impacts of visual communication, one regarding nuclear bodies in the script, the

other televisual representations of all the issues in the controversy. Taken

together, they reveal that significant issues emerged in the controversy, and each

author makes critical judgments against the backdrop of communication and

rhetorical scholarship.

On the other hand, these studies do exhibit some weaknesses, which

creates room for this dissertation to join, extend, and critique the previous

scholarly conversation. First, the previous studies failed to ascertain which

communication issues dominated the controversy and dictated the fate of the

Smithsonian, NASM and the Enola Gay. All the studies reviewed above

characterized the Enola Gay controversy as if it were a single issue debate. For

instance, Newman and Cripps did not account for issues other than the ones they

choose (history or televisual rhetoric), and did not attempt to compare and

evaluate the relative importance of their selected issues.

15

In addition, these studies failed to explain the potential intertwining of

multiple issues that emerged in the development of the controversy. The Enola

Gay controversy was not a one-time event. The NASM curators drafted their first

script in early 1994, and that began a controversy that lasted for a year. As critics

of the draft script objections to it and the NASM undertook script revisions; earlier

objections disappeared and new issues emerged. The existing communication and

rhetorical scholarship does not address these interactive elements, because it did

not put the Enola Gay controversy as constantly changing conflict that evolved

over time.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the current communication and

rhetorical scholarship has not taken into account the museum horrors in the

Enola Gay controversy, i.e., the problems of communication that go to the heart of

the American museum enterprise. Virtually absent in previous studies is any

consideration of the context of a particular museum exhibition. Nowhere in

Newmans analysis, for instance, does he make a distinction between the NASM

curators historical representation of Trumans decision to use the atomic bomb

and a history written by a revisionist historian. Proisese is honest about this

absence. While his own reading of the controversy does not exactly focus on the

institutional role of museums, one implication he does draw at the end of his article

is that the role of museums, as sites of cultural memory, should have been given

greater consideration (2003, p. 342). And because Cripps focuses almost

16

exclusively on the televisual representation, the institutional context of the

controversy is not well considered in his analysis.

To Taylors credit, his study on photographic realism does recognize the

context of museum controversy, because it analyzes visual and photographic

representation in the exhibit. Unfortunately, it does not fully take into account the

significance of this particular context, for the Enola Gay controversy was a

contestation over a particular museum exhibit that was never made realized. What

Taylor analyzed is not exactly the photographic representations used in the actual

exhibit but, rather, representations of the representations, i.e., the photocopy in

the exhibit script. Taking these representations of representations outside the

exhibit space as if they were displayed in the museum does not do justice to the

specific context of occurrence. Bieseckers rhetorical critique does fail to take into

account the institutional context, which, however, is exactly her point. She chose

to ignore this context of occurrence for the sake of her own conjunctural analysis,

a critical interpretive strategy that reads the text not against the backdrop of its

occurrence but, instead, as part and parcel of that dispersed but structured field of

practice (2003, p. 113).

Research Questions

Research Question 1: What were the issues that dominated the Enola Gaycontroversy?

The review of the previous studies revealed that communication and

rhetorical scholarship has not yet dealt with a set of problems that are most

17

fundamental: What was the Enola Gay controversy all about? What specific issue

or issues in the controversy led to NASMs cancellation of the exhibition? While

some attempts have been made by historians and museum scholars to explicate

issues from the perspectives of museum studies (White, 1997; Zolberg, 1996),

analysis of problems that are related to communicative practices have yet to be

examined and evaluated. Bieseckers conjuctural analysis has merit because the

Enola Gay controversy is not merely a problem of one museum exhibition.

However, neither her study nor any other rhetorical or communication scholarship

has ever fully explored the Enola Gay controversy within what she calls the

backdrop of its occurrence, namely, as a problem of situated communicative

practice.

Issues that emerged during the Enola Gay controversy necessarily have to

do with problems regarding the Smithsonians particular practice of

communication, i.e., placing the bombing as part of its exhibit discourse. In order

to answer the first research question, the issues that emerged as the Smithsonian

attempted to place the Enola Gay in its discursive space will be identified,

analyzed and evaluated.

Research Question 2: What does the Enola Gay controversy tell us aboutpotential problems involved in using museums as forums approach?

In posing this second question, I wish to put a particular analytical focus on

the controversys particular institutional context of occurrence. Placing the atomic

bomb in American society has always provoked discomfort and cultural struggle.

Since the controversy provoked as the Smithsonian attempted to place the Enola

18

Gay in its museum exhibit, issues that emerged in the controversy should

necessarily have to do with problems of a specific location, where/whether to place

history of the bombing in America.

The Enola Gay controversy was not just another museum controversy. In

the first place, NASM is not just another science and technology museum. It is one

of the Smithsonian museums, the nations premier cultural institution. Even more

important, as the one and only national museum devoted to the history of

Americas aviation and space technology, NASM has a specially assigned

communicative mission. That mission is, by law, to memorialize the national

development of aviation [and space flight]; collect, preserve, and display

aeronautical [and space flight] equipment of historical interest and significance

("National Air and Space Museum Act," 1946). This dissertation will explore how

NASMs institutional context and assigned mission became an issue and concerns

about place and mission can affect other museums choices of exhibits and

approaches to exhibition.

Research Question 3: Are there ways in which future controversies such asthat which surrounded the Enola Gay exhibit could be avoided or mitigated?

Finally, this study attempts to inquire into general problems of museum

controversy, using the Enola Gay controversy as a paradigm case. Controversy is

no stranger to students of rhetoric and public communication. The idea of

controversy is one of the most important virtues in Greco-Roman rhetoric. We

continue to teach and study controversy because it is intrinsically significant and

positive (Conly, 1985). Participants in a controversy, through critical exchange,

19

seek to establish (or challenge the already established) social conventions,

precedents and norms (Mitchell, 2000). Controversy is a significant instance of a

communitys engagement in matters of public concern, and is essential to

sustaining democratic ideals in a pluralistic society such as the United States

(Goodnight, 1992; Olson & Goodnight, 1994). Moreover, controversy is no

stranger to the nations museum community. American museums are now premier

sites of cultural struggle. They have now become forums, a center for critical

discourse (Cameron, 1971/2004; Weil, 1995, 2004); debate, contestation, and

controversies, therefore, are normal practices of public communication at many

museums throughout the country.

In seeking to answer this final question, I will attempt to discover what

lessons can be learned from the Enola Gay controversy, particularly with regard to

problems of communicating controversy through museum exhibition. While the

museum horrors that the Smithsonian experienced with The Crossroads may not

be wholly unavoidable, there may exist some ways in which museums could

mitigate unnecessary troubles when they are launching controversial exhibits in

the future. Addressing this problematic necessitates a combination of institutional

and issue analysis. Tracing the institutional metamorphosis of American

museums in conjunction with the analysis of issues that emerged in the Enola Gay

controversy, will, hopefully, provide some insight into the future of museum

controversies in the United States.

20

Method and Text

Method

This dissertation is a case study of controversy. It also highlights a

particular context of its occurrence in its analysis. To this end, its method for

analysis consists of the following two steps: an analysis of museums as institutions

of public communication and a textual analysis of the actual controversy.

In the first place, the study seeks to trace the historical development of

museums in the United States. Drawing on the literature of museum studies or

museology, the particular institutional context in which the Enola Gay controversy

emerged will be examined. One part of this examination will look at the museums

functions as agencies of communication, with specific references to museum

professionals and curators self-understanding of their roles as public

communicators. Another emphasis in this institutional analysis is on particular

American characteristics of museums in the United States which significantly

differ from those of their European origins, given that the Enola Gay controversy is

a provocative instance of nuclear domesticity that took place in the American

context. This recreation of the context also includes a specific backdrop of

occurrence of the Enola Gay controversy, i.e., characteristics of the Smithsonians

NASM as a speaker of public communication. This contextualization of the actual

controversy where it originated is helpful in identifying and illuminating the issues

for critical analysis.

21

A major portion of this study will be devoted to an analysis of the issues

developed during the Enola Gay controversy. Regarding the method for this step,

this study draws on descriptive as well as critical cultural analysis of discourse.

The study first engages in description of issues that emerged in the Enola Gay

controversy, by identifying discourses of pros and cons regarding the NASMs

planned exhibit, and moves onto discuss how these issues were developed,

extended, or subsided as the Smithsonian continued to refine the script. The study

then critically interprets and evaluates these issues.

The study methodically follows a traditional analysis of public controversy

undertaken by rhetorical and communication scholars (Foss, 1979; Lyne & Howe,

1986; Olson, 1989; Olson & Goodnight, 1994; Oravec, 1984; Zaeske, 1995). More

specifically, it seeks to (1) describe the rationale behind the Smithsonians exhibit

as well as issues raised against the Smithsonian, (2) discuss how the Smithsonian

and their critics attempted to resolved (chose not to resolve) these issues, and (3)

identify which issues were persistent and dominant and eventually put the

Smithsonian exhibit to a halt.

One operation that will become particularly important for this study,

however, is an explication of the who of the social discourses. This type of

analysis is crucial to an examination of discourses over national commemoration

such as this debate. Participants in these discourses are what Spillman (1997)

calls culture producing groups who are likely to have vested interest in the

national culture. For such groups, commemorative discourses provide them with

22

important opportunities for producing and contesting the national culture. The

Enola Gay controversy is a provocative aspect of American nuclear domesticity

that concerned the nations premier cultural institution. Given this particular context

of occurrence, analysis of issues should account for the broader discursive field

within which the symbols were organized and became meaningful as national

symbols (Spillman, 1997, p. 7, emphasis in original).

Thus this study will aim to analyze the critical discourses or issues raised

against the Smithsonian by the following culture producing groups. First group

consists of historians, particularly those who are or were in military service. These

include members of the Smithsonian-appointed Special Advisory Board as well as

the Tiger Team, a committee of former military service historians who conducted

an independent review of NASMs draft of the exhibit script. This culture producing

group also includes historians who were in the active military service at that time

and who participated in the script revision as part of the World War II

Commemoration Committee established by the United States Congress.

Military veterans and their organizations comprise the second group of

participants. While they did not play an official role in the Smithsonians script

development and exhibit preparation, at least initially, these individuals and groups

exercised tremendous influence on the direction of the Enola Gay controversy.

Another important military group who participated in the controversy is the Air

Force Association (AFA). The AFA is an organization that represents the United

States military Air Force and others in the formation of the nations politico-

23

economic-culture. The AFA played an important role in making the Enola Gay

controversy public by orchestrating and organizing the media campaigns against

the Smithsonian.

The final group of participants in the Enola Gay controversy are those who

claim to represent voices of mainstream America in the political public sphere.

These included members of the United States Congressional majority

(Republicans) as well as others who shared the same American values with the

Congressional majority and represent such values in mass media, particularly in

print journalism.

Text

While a significant portion of this case study involves analysis of issues that

appeared in rhetorical discourse, unfortunately there is no self-contained text of

the Enola Gay controversy ready for analysis. In addition, there is no specific,

representative, and tangible memory texts available in such forms as

cinematography, photography, and memorials as they often are in other studies of

cultural memory (Biesecker, 2002; Foss, 1986; Hariman & Lucaites, 2002;

Sturken, 1997; Wagner-Pacifici & Schwartz, 1991). On the other hand, the

controversy, as a textual trajectory, continues with its strong rhetorical presence.

Ruins, remains, and spoils of the controversy still exist in a variety of discursive

forms, albeit scattered out and fragmentary. The Enola Gay controversy is an

event that took place when the National Air and Space Museum initiated exhibit

24

preparation in 1987 and ended when the Smithsonian announced the exhibits

cancellation in early 1995. To trace the trajectory of the controversy, this study

utilized the following primary materials that were published or circulated during this

particular period.

In the first place, this study locates the trajectory of the controversy in

documents pertaining to direct communication within and among the Smithsonian

staff and its critics. Materials pertaining to this process include the exhibit scripts,

an external review report, internal memos and personal memoirs of the

Smithsonian personnel; and letters of correspondence between the Smithsonian,

historians, veteran groups and congressional representatives. These documents

were circulated in the public domain either by themselves or through third parties.

The Air Force Association, for instance, compiled these documents and made its

massive collection widely accessible on their web site; they are also available as

bounded copies, free of charge ("Enola Gay coverage 1995," 1995; "Enola Gay

documents part II," 2000; "Enola Gay documents part III," 2002; "Enola Gay

documents," 1996). I also obtained other relevant documents from the

Smithsonian Institution Archives by traveling to Washington, D.C. in December

2004.

Because many issues were raised in the print media (Capaccio & Mohan,

1995), the textual trajectory of the Enola Gay controversy also required

examination of media discourses. Particularly relevant were letters to the editor

sections in newspapers; many of these letters by veterans contained strong voices

25

of opposition to the Smithsonian. Other relevant discursive fragments were found

in editorials written by political commentators and syndicated columnists who

purported to represent the voice of (mainstream) America. From June 1994 to

February 1995, national (e.g., the Washington Post, the New York Times, the

Wall Street Journal) as well as numerous regional newspapers (e.g., the

Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Pittsburgh Gazette) and other periodicals (e.g., Time,

U.S. News & World Report) published letters and editorials regarding NASMs

Enola Gay exhibit. In particular, the Washington Post printed many of these critical

reactions to the Smithsonian and this dissertation extensively draws upon the Post

for the analysis of the textual trajectory. First, as a Washington newspaper, the

Post was the most sensitive and the most influential to the development of the

controversy over the exhibit planned at the museum located on the Washington

Mall. Second, while many other newspapers did print similar critical discourses to

the Smithsonian, it is the Post that printed the very first critical editorial of such

kind (Meyer, 1994) that turned a museum controversy into a nationwide political

scandal (Capaccio & Mohan, 1995).

Other remains of the controversy can also be found in the text of the

Congressional resolutions and hearings. These are public documents which are

readily available. In particular, a 1994 Senate resolution ("S. Res. 207," 1994)

features strong statement by influential Congressional representatives opposing

the Smithsonians planned exhibit. Finally, press releases by Congressional

26

representatives and veterans groups also provided primary documents for

analysis.

Chapter Organization

In closing this chapter, notes about the structure of this dissertation are in

order. Following this Introduction, Chapter 2 demonstrates that American

museums now operate under the metaphor of forum, a place where controversy

and debate take place. The chapter traces the institutional metamorphosis of

museums and examines the museum communitys rationale fro embracing the

forum approach to exhibiting. The discussion in this chapter offers a necessary

context for the analysis of the Enola Gay controversy.

Chapter 3 begins with discussion on the unique mission that NASM is

assigned to perform. It identifies the museums historical role as that of national

epideictic whose stated purpose has always been to glorify the genius and

achievement of Americas air and space industry and heroes. The chapter then

moves to explicate how that unique rhetorical mission has created a long and

troubling relation with the Enola Gay. Toward the end, the chapter also outlines

the script for the Smithsonians controversial exhibit and discusses a specific

institutional context that encouraged the Smithsonian to engage such

museological attempt.

Chapter 4 offers an issue analysis of the Enola Gay controversy against the

backdrop of the context recreated in the previous chapters. Reclaiming and tracing

27

the rhetorical trajectory of the controversy, the chapter first discusses the

Smithsonians rationale for the exhibit, and proceeds to identify and discuss critical

reactions to it by various groups and individual who had high stakes in the Enola

Gay and its mission. This chapter also analyzes how the Smithsonian dealt with

these issues, which ultimately determined the outcome of the Enola Gay

controversy.

Finally, Chapter 5 concludes this dissertation by answering the research

questions. It also discusses some limitations of the study and some implications

for further research.

28

CHAPTER 2

FROM CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES TO POLITICAL FORUMS: THE

METAMORPHOSIS OF AMERICAN PUBLIC MUSEUMS

The purpose of this chapter is to trace the institutional metamorphosis of

American museums with special attention to their role as agents of

communication. As cultural institutions, the primary role of museums had long

been acquisition, collection, preservation, and display of historic artifacts; cabinets

of curiosities used to be the metaphor that best described their function. Given

the current state of American museums, however, that metaphor is no longer

appropriate. Because communication does not take place in a vacuum but occurs

in a specific discursive space, an understanding of this metamorphosis is

necessary for an investigation of the Enola Gay controversy. Subsequent chapters

will demonstrate how this changing character of museums made the controversy

so contentious and complex.

Public Museums as an American Invention

A history of modern museums is that of public museums (Bennett, 1995;

Bourdieu & Darbel, 1991), and this is particularly true in the United States. While

the idea of modern museums originated in Europe, the notion of the public was

secondary to their formation and self-understanding. Conventional history has it

that the worlds first public museum was born in post revolutionary Paris at the end

29

of the 18th century when the former palace of the king was renovated and became

the Louvre (Museum National: Monument Consacre a lAmr et a lEtude des Arts).

Yet, precursors existed in the private sphere to serve the aristocracy. They were

places where the rich and Royal showed off their wealth by displaying private

collections of paintings, sculptures, jewelries, and other valuables and

collectables. They existed solely for private reasons and interests, i.e., ones self-

enjoyment, self-satisfaction and power. Nichlin (1972) has observed the ultimate

transfer of these properties from the hands of aristocratic rulers to the public faced

strong resistance and generated enormous controversies.

The development of American museums took a different path. They were

established in a world devoid of hereditary kings and queensa world that was

both more open and more public in its traditions and values. Their beginning

coincided with the dawn of modern America, and their origin was distinct from that

of their European counterparts. This distinctly American in origin has dictated their

successive formation and self-understanding.

These new museums in a brave new world were fundamentally public

institutions. The mid-19th century saw the blooming of museums in the United

States, a time when private charitable gift giving, testifying to the spirit of

individual initiative, play[ed] a large part in the countrys growth (Hein, 2000, p. 6).

The development of museums was a significant part of the process of building a

strong and cohesive national community. While American museums relied on

donations and gifts from wealthy individuals as their primary source of income,

30

they were not privately owned. With the exception of many art galleries that

were, and still remain, private (Fry, 1972), most of these museums were, at

conception, incorporated along with hospitals, churches, and various educational

and service agencies as nonprofit organizations (Hein, 2000, p. 6). Thus, these

institutions were strongly committed to an American idea of public virtue:

charitable giving for the common good (Bellah et al., 1996). Their raisen detre

was, and remains, social utility, the purpose of which is to serve the American

public.

From their very inception, museums in America have viewed

educationnot aristocratic displayas their fundamental goal. While the scope of

their programs and their approaches to education have evolved over the centuries,

museums in the United States have characteristically embraced four uniquely

American concepts. It is because of their adherence to these concepts that

American museums have made such an important contribution to their publics and

to community building.

First, American museums are instruments of public enlightenment that

provide equal access to education. Unlike their European counterparts that

perpetuate social stratification, privilege, and cultural monopoly (Bourdieu &

Darbel, 1991; Hooper-Greenhill, 1994), American museums are democratic and

popular in principle. Like libraries, notes Katz (1982), museums [in the United

States] are fundamentally educational institutions with a responsibility to make

their collections availableand meaningfulto the largest possible audience, and

31

to serve as valuable educational reservoir to their communities (p. 11). The idea

of an American museum is that of an open space where class distinctions become

largely irrelevant. It was in [these] newly established museums of revolutionary

America that the doors were fully opened to the general public (Roberts, 1997, p.

4).

Second, educational experience in American museums is pragmatic. The

idea behind this is that enlightenment leads to both personal cultivation and

communal growth. Specialization of museums accelerated in the United States

during the late 19th century as it did in Europe. The oldest form of museums were

arts museums whose purpose was to provide the public with an opportunity to

experience beauty ("Museums and their characteristics," 1990). Later, museums

of history and science became centers for serious academic endeavors in areas

such as anthropology, archeology, biology, botany, and entomology. However, the

purpose of American museums, unlike their European counterparts, was not

merely to engage in esoteric research and display exotic artifacts in cabinets of

curiosities. The purpose and the only purpose of museums [in America] is

education in all its varied aspects from the most scholarly research to the simple

arousing of curiosity. That education, however, must be active, not passive, and it

must always be intimately connected with the life of the people (Low, 1942, p. 21).

American museums rest on the idea that research and learning should be usable

and practical; producing and exhibiting knowledge for knowledges sake is not

what they aim at. Ideas are worthless except as they pass into actions which

32

rearrange and reconstruct in some way, be it little or large, the world in which we

live (Dewey, 1929, p.104; also see Schieffler, 1966). This idea of a practical

educational experience is a second distinctive characteristic of American

museums.

Third, American museums are not intended to be all-inclusive, stand-alone

public institutions; they are committed to the total cause of education (Low, 1942,

p. 26). Although tremendously rich in resources, American museums recognize

that the academic opportunities they provide mean little unless they are connected

to other academic institutions. In the United States, primary and secondary

education that benefited the most from the educational resources that museums

offer; schoolchildren, for example, have been their most frequent visitors and

preferred customers.

During the 1920s, the first staff instructors were appointed at American

museums, and a new academic profession devoted to studies of, and education

in, museums emerged. American universities and colleges became the first in the

world to offer majors and programs specializing in museum education, and

scholarly associations for museum professionals were soon inaugurated (Nichols,

1984; Patterns in practice, 1992). In the 1960s when the G.I. Bill made higher

education affordable to larger segments of the American population, museums

began to welcome more college and university students (Solinger, 1990). In recent

years, American museums sought to reach out more broadly to the adult

33

community and have led the way in the development of special programs and

exhibits directed to their special needs and interests.

Finally, American museums have contributed to the total cause of education

at a most fundamental and philosophical level through the constitution of a

community and collective identity. Communities are constituted by their past. . .

and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a community of

memory, one that does not forget its past (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swindler &

Tipton, 1996, p. 153; also see Wood & Foster, 1997). The American public

chronically suffers from a lack of common memory and hence, of common

community. The existence of a community cannot be assumed a priori in the

United States. The American public has been composed fundamentally of

settlers; the first generation of immigrants, for example, were devoid of a memory

of a common past. Moreover, the American idea of individual liberty and the

pursuit of happiness rests on the dissolution of the common bonds and feudal

solidarities that existed in Europe. As this founding idea was translated into an

ideology of individualism, constituents in the American public were further torn

apart from each other (Levine, 2004).

As public institutions committed to the total cause of education, museums in

the United States have sought to aid in the development of new communities of

American memory: Many U.S. history museums and historic sites developed from

the bottom up, as a result of community initiative that sought ways to memorialize

a communitys history and celebrate its traditions and achievements (Kotler &

34

Kotler, 1998, p. 14). In addition to offering aesthetic experiences and scientific

knowledge, American museums have become places where the public can

engage in gathering and accumulating bits and pieces of their experiences and

creating a common past. They are what Nora calls sites of memory (Nora, 1989)

in the brave new world. By telling themselves to remember what they (want

to/should) take to be their communal, national past, people acquire a sense of

national identity, a sense of themselves as tied to the national society as a whole

(Schudson, 1992, p. 66). By passing this common past on to successive

generations, American museums help communities maintain a sense of history

and continuity from which stable collective identities are derived (Giddens, 1991;

Schelly-Newman, 1997; Schudson, 1992). In so doing, they also work as a

counterbalance to the ideology of individualism. As Perin (1992) has observed:

People living in a society that compartmentalizes and institutionalizes livedexperiencedividing it into work, family, politics, and religion, forexampledepend on cultural institutions for their opportunities to achievecoherence, growth, and an evolving sense of identity. Museums aresingularly important stimuli for human synthesis. (p. 216)

Communicating with the Public

As noted earlier, the mission to serve the public has always already been

central to the development of American museums. Unlike their European

counterparts, American museums have to take the presence of the public

seriously. Given that education is their raisen detre, American public museums

are destined to face a peculiar challenge: Museums must communicate or die

(Hooper-Greenhill, 1994, p. 34). Indeed, for museums in the United States,

35

communicating and building relationships with the public is the heart of their

professional practices (Kotler & Kotler, 1998). Museums assume a role similar to

that of a teacher, and to fulfill that function, they must recognize that

communicating with their audiences is at least as important as collecting and

preserving artifacts. As museums become more focused on communication. . . ,

[museum professionals] are asked to be public communicators as well as research

scholars (Franco, 1981, p. 157).

Because most public communication today is mass-mediated,

contemporary museums are sometimes thought of as a branch of mass media.

Yet, the functions of museums are distinct from those of the conventional media,

thus requiring a special kind of understanding of the process of communication

(Hodge & D'Souza, 1979, p. 146). In the first place, public museums do not

communicate with a mass audience. The members of a mass media audience

are generally conceived of as being essentially identical. Differences within are

considered to be insignificant. This enables the media to treat their audiences in a

singularly fashion, namely as mass. However, curators of todays public

museums are generally aware of the fact that the American public consists of

many communities. Thus museum goers are diverse; they cannot be reduced to a

single entity and conceived as a mass. As Lavine (1992) notes, it is patently false,

and certainly patronizing, to assume a unitary public (p. 139).

Moreover, the idea of mass communication is fundamentally one-way,

namely, a single source transmitting to many. American museums have, on the

36

other hand, increasingly sought to involve their patrons more actively in the

exhibits. Museum audience are encouraged to be less passive listeners and

consumers of knowledge. As Weil (1995) observes, a simple transmission model

does not replicate what takes place in exhibit spaces; it simply does not apply.

Thank to innovations in presentational technology and hands-on exhibits, for

instance, museum spaces have become more interactive (Anderson, 1999).

Further, museum visitors are hardly blank slates or tabula rasa (Graham Jr.,

1995). Contemporary museum goers are equipped with diverse prior knowledge,

semantic systems, expectations, and interpretive frames; accordingly,

communication in museums becomes inherently conversational and multivocal.

Silently or vocally, communication takes place as the visitor responds to a

combination of pictures, demonstrations, exhibits, and labels. . . [A] museum

seeks to share its understanding with the visitor through personal interaction

(Weinland & Bennett, 1984, p. 39).

Given these complexities of their communicative relations with the public,

American museums have moved away from the simple mass media model.

Recent literature reveals that museums have adopted a different language for their

self-understanding and are most frequently referred to as forums (H. S. Hein,

2000; Roberts, 1997; Weil, 1995; White, 1997). The origin of this idea dates back

to 1971, when Duncan Cameron, then Director of the Brooklyn Museum, first

introduced this metaphor with its companion, museums as temples, in his

University of Colorado Museum Lecture (1971/2004). Simply put, these metaphors

37

denote two competing functionalities of communication that museums may

perform: product or process. The product view corresponds to the notion of a

museum as a temple, a place where Truth is enshrined and found. If the

museum said that this or that was so, then that was a statement of truth

(Cameron, 1971/2004, p. 66).

The notion of forum, on the other hand, accentuates the process-like

nature of the museum experience. It is a materialization of equal access to

education and other cultural opportunities: a sphere of public communication

where meanings are made, values are tested, identities are (re)created, and

battles are fought. As Cameron (1971/2004) has argued,

[T]here is a real and urgent need for the reestablishment of the forum as aninstitution in society. While our bona fide museums seek to becomerelevant, maintaining their role as temples, there must be concurrentcreation of forums for confrontation, experimentation, and debate. (p. 68)

Cameron has acknowledged that, in general, society needs both temples and

forums, although he obviously opted for the latter.

When Cameron first introduced the idea of museums as forums in the early

1970s, museums in the United States were in an identity crisis. At that time, no

one knew what museums were or where they should to go, and very few

considered his metaphor to be a description of what was actually taking place in

museum spaces. What he attempted by the metaphor was not a description but a

radical reconceptualization of American museums, a kind of psychotherapy

(Cameron, 1971/2004, p. 61).

38

Now in a new millennium, Camerons vision of American museums as

places where conversation, discussion and debate take place has come to be

accepted by more and more American museums. Literature documenting this

metamorphosis abounds. Kamien (1998), for instance, has described the publics

reaction to her exhibit on AIDS (Ending: An Exhibit about Death and Loss) at the

Boston Children Museum as an explosion. Ogline (2004) has reported on the

Liberty Bell controversy, a verbal confrontation that took place at the

Independence National Historical Parks exhibition pavilion and testified to the

significance of interpretive talks at the site. Allen (1996) has reported on another

controversy that took place at the Museum of the Confederacy in Virginia, when

Robin Reed, its ex-Director, attempted to encourage a more inclusive, civil

discussion of the uncivil aspects of the war at the museum long considered to be

a shrine for Confederate die-hards. To provide visitors with food for thought, the

Museum of Science in Boston has a theatrical exhibit titled The Spotted Owl

Caf, in which two actors play characters who take opposing views over issues of

environmental protection and, as Hughes (1998) notes, the caf generates a wide

variety of visitor experiences, talks, and reactions. And Juanita Moore, the Director

of the National Civil Rights Museum, has provided her first-hand account of

visitors behaviors on the exhibition floors. She reports, Most groups are speaking

out for themselves, in some way or another, so you have many people who are

actively watching to make sure that they are being included (Honey & Moore,

1995, p. 75)

39

These are hardly isolated cases. Dubin (1999) has analyzed a variety of

museum exhibits that generated controversies, from the Metropolitan Museum of

Arts to the Brooklyn Museum of Sensation, and concludes: Museums have

become places where conflicts over some of the most vital issues regarding

national character and group identity. . . regularly break out (p. 245). Boyd (1999)

contends that museum controversies and conflicts do not simply happen; they

have become integral part of exhibitions at most American museums. Luke (2002)

also argues that, from a socio-political perspective, most museum exhibitions are

inherently provocations of critical exchange, for they are brimming with

unresolved cultural contradiction and social conflicts (p. 230). According to

McConnells (1998) extensive review of past issues of Museum News, there is an

evident and tremendous increase in controversies and debates over museum

exhibits. Five of the controversies that he refers to have occurred at the

Smithsonian including the one on NASMs Enola Gay.

Thirty years have passed since Camerons initial use of the forum and

temple, metaphors, and the forum concept seems to have become increasingly

more appropriate. American museums are now full of critical discourse. From

Bostons Museum of Arts to the Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society

Museum to Winston-Salems Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art to

Alaskas Pratt Museum to the Phoenix Art Museum to the California Academy of

Sciences, contentions and contestations are found nationwide. Public museums

have become more vocal than ever in the past thirty years, and controversies have

40

become a routine part of the professional life of museum staff. Thus Hall (1998)

has assured the museum community that [Y]our mission to educate the public

through your exhibits will not go away, nor will the potential for controversies (p.

4).

The idea of forum is not simply a descriptive metaphor that fits; it has

normative implications for the current formation of public museums in the United

States. Museums curators throughout the nation now embrace the notion of forum

as a guiding principle for their communicative practices of exhibition. Henderson

and Kaeppler (1997) thus note that the cabinets of curiosities are being replaced

by interpretations about the origins, meaning, and value of objects. . . Yesterdays

cabinets of curiosities are living, breathing founts of ideas (p. 1). Controversy and

confrontation are hardly accidental or unexpected in many of American museums;

they are rather staged by curators. Curators believe that controversy provides

visitors with stimuli for human synthesis, and that this is an important contribution

that museums can make to the total cause of education. Through controversy

museum visitors have opportunities to achieve coherence, growth, and an evolving

sense of communal identity. American museums today are institutional sponsors

of discussions and debates on social issues (Gaither, 1992). Hein (2000) observes

that many museums now proudly accept amplified educational mandate to

stimulate and encourage inquiry (Hein, 2000, p. 6). Particularly when it comes to

history, the crucial lesson that museums offer to their visitors is that no version of

41

the past is neutral or objective. . . [T]he ameliorative task of the history museum. . .

is to teach interpretive skepticism (Gable & Handler, 1994, p. 120).

It is important to note, however, that the idea of forum does not make

conventional exhibits obsolete. Visitors critical discourse does not replace

artifacts, interpretive labels, and displays. For instance, it is not the function of

history museums to remain completely silent and let visitors debate history

throughout their exhibit spaces; this is not what the idea of forum stipulates. It

rather suggests that museums should not privilege their status when

communicating. Forums just mean that everyone is equally authorized to speak in

museum spaces. As opposed to museums as temples, museums as forums

recognize that stories they tell visitors are no truer than visitors stories. Museum

stories are simply their own versions of the story. As Weil (1995) states:

The solution. . . is not to stop telling stories but to recognize them for whatthey are: a version, our version, but by no means the only version nornecessarily a wholly true version. . . Simple statements may be true orfalse, but something as complex as a story can never be, in that traditionallegal formulation, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. . . . Asmuseum workers, we are not merely passive reflectors of the worldsimplerecorders of its seven wondersbut active participants in the creation of itsmeaning, shapers of reality. (p. 17)

Chapter Summary

Tracing institutional metamorphosis in the American museum community,

this chapter demonstrated that the idea of communication that guides discursive

practices of exhibition has changed. Museum professionals now have embraced

the metaphor of forum for their self-understanding and ways in which they

42

communicate with their publics. Controversies are not accidents in museum

spaces; they constitute necessary part of the whole educational experience

museum exhibits can offer. The chapter also revealed that museums commitment

public enlightenment remains largely unchanged. As cultural institutions with

distinct public missions, the rationale behind this metamorphosis is the museum

communitys firm commitment, i.e., contribution to the nations total cause of

education.

43

CHAPTER 3

LOCATING THE ENOLA GAY CONTROVERSY: ITS TIME AND PLACE

The previous chapter provided an institutional background to the emerging

Enola Gay controversy. It described the changes that have occurred within the

museum community and how those changes have redefined and refocused the

role of museums in American culture. By the middle of the 20th century the

educational role of most public museums had broadened well beyond the

cabinets of curiosities, and the role of museums as public forums was broadly

accepted.

This chapter will examine more narrowly the unique roles of the National Air

and Space Museum (NASM), one of the newest affiliated unit of the Smithsonian

museums. It will also discuss the unclear place of the Enola Gay in American

history and the tension it created regarding NASMs epideictic mission and its

educational goal as the Museum of the American Century. Finally, it will describe

the script that the Smithsonian prepared for its exhibit commemorating the 50th

anniversary of the end of World War II and the proposed role of the Enola Gay in

that exhibit, with a brief discussion of the particular historical context in which such

an exhibit had emerged within the Smithsonian.

44

The Smithsonian and its National Air and Space Museum

The Origin

In the mid-1840s the United States government received a half million

dollar bequest from James Smithson. The recently deceased Smithson was an

English scientist who had never visited the United States nor had any known

personal or professional associations with it. The reason for his gift remains a

mystery. After debating what to do with thiswhat was at the timevery large

bequest, Congress eventually authorized the establishment of a center for

scientific investigation with its affiliated museums. In 1853 a site in Washington,

D.C. was assigned to the new Smithsonian Institution, and Joseph Henry was

named as its founding Secretary. The Smithsonian was never the property of the

State and has, from its inception, been, by law, a public institution independent of

the U.S. federal government. Leonard Carmichael, the Smithsonian Secretary

from 1953-63, explained that the [Smithsonian] Institution is by no means

exclusively concerned with museum displays (quoted in Conaway, 1995, p. 276).

All of these make the Smithsonian and its museums a premier and typically

American cultural institution in the United States.

The National Air and Space Museum is a relatively late comer to the

Smithsonians Washington, D.C. museum complex in Washington, D.C. NASM

was officially authorized in 1946, by 77a of Title 20 U.S.C., otherwise known as

the National Air and Space Museum Act ("National Air and Space Museum Act,"

45

1946); however, the appropriation of the funds to carry out the actual construction

of the museum had to wait for another twenty five years (Roland, 1993;

Smithsonian general background, 1970). Nevertheless, the Smithsonians relation

to aviation and, by extension, space flight has been long and passionate and

preceded the actual authorization and construction of NASM (Chaikin, 1997; 2002

official guide, 2002). In fact, the origins of an air and space museum date back to

the late 19th century, 1887 to be more exact, when the Smithsonian welcomed

Samuel Langley as its new Secretary. Langley had always been interested in

aeronautics. A proto-type aviator, he was the designer of Aerodrome, an aircraft

with which he twice made successful unmanned flight. During his tenure at the

Smithsonian, the Institute initiated a succession of manned flight attempts with his

Great Aerodrome. Albeit unsuccessful, these attempts postdated the Wright

brothers.

During this period the Smithsonians aviation collection was begun with the

receipt of a donation of 20 beautiful Chinese kites, a donation it received from the

Chinese Imperial Commission. From that time on, the Smithsonian aggressively

sought to collect more aircraft and other artifacts of historical significance, in the

hope for ultimately building a museum devoted exclusively to history of aviation

and aeronautic technology. Funding had, however, always been a major problem.

While artifacts and aircraft themselves were either donated or loaned at minimum

cost, the problem of accommodation and maintenance posed difficulty (Hotz,

1979). Some remained in the Tin Shed, an old military communication building,

46

while others were at the Art and Industry Building, popularly known as the

Smithsonian Castle. It did not take long for the Smithsonian, to realize that these

spaces were too small to house such a collection.

Nevertheless, the problem of funding and accommodation did not prevent

the Smithsonians already massive collection from growing. By the mid 20th

century, historic aircraft such as Charles Lindberghs Spirit of St. Louis and the

Wright brothers Kitty Hawk Flyer became part of the Smithsonian collection. With

the onset of the age of air travel, the Smithsonian also started to receive donations

of civil and commercial aircraft, including the Douglas DC-7, the worlds first

commercially viable airplane. After the two World Wars, a large influx of military

aircraft came to the Smithsonian, including the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

bomber, Grummans F4F Wildcat fighter, and Douglass Slowly but Deadly

dauntless bomber. Military donation also included such spoils of war as Germanys

V-2 rocket and Japans Zero Fighter. With the advent of supersonic and space

flight, high-tech gadgets such as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and the

Mercury and the Apollo space capsules joined its collection.

The National Air and Space Museum was officially opened on July 4, 1976

as part of the nations Bicentennial celebration. Its a bird, its a plane, its

Supermuseum! Its the National Air and Space Museum (Huxtable, 1976, p. 22).

Located conveniently between Independence Avenue and the Washington Mall,

NASM has become the citys and the nations premier tourist attraction. The core

of the Museum is its collections: nearly 30,000 aviation artifacts and 9,000 space

47

aircrafts, including more than 350 aircraft and scores of rockets and spacecrafts

(2002 official guide, 2002, p.11).

NASM is not only a Mecca for aviation and space enthusiasts. A cross

between Disneyland and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, it also bring[s] joy,

instruction, and wonder toas the expression goeschildren of all ages

(Huxtable, 1976, p. 22). By the end of its first year, NASM has already welcomed

10 million visitors (Smithsonian Institution, 1977). By the early 1990s, more than

175 million people had visited the museum, making it the most visited museum in

the world. Visitors now come from every state of the United States and one out of

five comes from overseas (1991 official guide, 1991).

The opening of the Supermuseum on the Mall was significant for the

Smithsonian and, by extension, the American museum community at large. It was

the realization of Langleys and the Smithsonians long-awaited-dream. Their

passion and fascination with aviation had finally come to fruition. More importantly,

NASM was the best the museum community could offer to the American public

and the rest of the world regarding the history of aviation and aerospace. It

carefully chronicles the history of humankinds efforts to fly. The museum gives

visitors a first-hand impression of how aviation and space flight have changed the

ways in which we travel by air, prepare for national defense, study the Earth and

its resources, and explore the solar system and the universe beyond (2002 official

guide, 2002, p. 7; Smith, 1977). In so doing, NASM follows the terms of James

Smithsons will: I then bequeath the whole of my property. . . to the United States

48

of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution,

an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men (quoted in

Oehser, 1949, p. 12).

The Air and Space Museum as American Epideictic

To fully understand the significance of NASM in America, the above

account alone is not sufficient. While Langleys passion and the Smithsonians

massive collection of artifacts no doubt constitute a significant part of the

museums character, the realization of an independent national air (and space)

museum should be viewed in a broader cultural milieu. Since the early years of the

20th century, airplanes and (particularly manned) flight have occupied a special

place in American cultural discourse (Corn, 1983; Pisano, 2003). And it is

aviations special place in American culture that gives NASM a unique iconic

status.

In the first place, the airplane is a significant symbol of 20th century

American culture. By way of myriad sourcesprint, illustration, film, cartoon, toys,

radio, and personal travelimages of flight remain. . . parcel of the American

experience and its popular imagination (Bilstein, 2003, p. 32). Aviation is a

realization of the ultimate human dream; manned flight is the epitome of our

conquest of the nature, i.e., the law of gravity. The airplane is thus not just another

machine; it rather symbolize[s] the promise of twentieth-century technology, a

49

shining promise of the machine age and exemplars of the gospel of flight

(Bilstein, 2003, p. 18).

Second and more importantly, for many Americans aviation is a unique

American accomplishment, a product of American genius and spirit that

contributes significantly to the advancement of humanity. As August Post, then

Secretary of Aero Club of America, exclaimed on the occasion of Orville Wrights

first successful flight: The whole town is up in the air. . . All the big guns are going

to boom this afternoon and the great American Eagle is going to spread its

wings. . . . [o]n account of the success of Orville Wright and the supremacy of

American Genius (quoted in Crouch, 2003, p. 5). As a parcel of experience and

imagination, this image of aviation as a uniquely American accomplishment has

appeared in many forms. For instance, many Americans consider flight as to be a

brave, heroic act. Thus, many of the great heroes in American fictions and comics,

from Superman to Batman to a high school teacher in the television series The

Greatest American Hero, can fly. By the same token, those who have made

significant accomplishments in the field of aviation are accorded with the status of

heroes and heroines in American culture; the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh,

and Amelia Earhart, to name a few, are all American heroes and heroines.

Moreover, this American image of aviation as a heroic accomplishment is

attributed not only to those who fly or flew, but also extends to those who have

made their flights possible. In other words, aviation is not only an individual

accomplishment; its heroic status is also accorded to groups, teams,

50

organizations, communities, and, most importantly, America. During the interwar

years, for instance, Germany was reputed for its excellence in industrial production

and technological advancement. In this historical context, as Bilstein (2003) notes,

the image of aviation as a unique American accomplishment made a subtle

alteration: American mass production was seen as the avenger to the German

Kraftwerk. Mass production was, after all, a fundamental principle of Americas

industrial strength (p. 19). It was this industrial principle that enabled American

military and economic dominance to persist all through the 20th century. From this

perspective, American air heroes were not only ace fighter pilots. In American

culture airplane designers, engineers, mechanics and maintenance workers, and

even those who worked at a factorys production lines at home became a part of

the aeronautical mythology (Bilstein, 2003, p. 19). John Steinbecks Bombs Away,

a novel about an American bomber team, perhaps best captures this unique

American idea:

This is a kind of organization that Americans above all others are bestcapable of maintaining. The bomber team is truly a democraticorganization. No single man can give all the others to make a bombereffective. . . Not everyone on a football team insists on being quarterback.He plays the position he is best fitted to play. The best football team is onewhere every member plays his own particular game as a part of the team.The best bomber team is the one where each man plays for the success ofthe mission. (quoted in Goldstein, 2003, p. 240)

The symbolic significance attached to aviation in American c