The Enola Gay Controversy Essay, Research Paper

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.

Some Congress members felt that the Enola Gay exhibit did not fit the popular viewpoints, and therefore should not be funded with tax dollars. Senator Stevens questioned taxpayers support of ‘a book or a museum exhibit on the basis of scholarly enterprise, despite the fact that it goes against the commonly accepted viewpoint as to the interpretation of the history of the event’. This statement basically suggests that unless a view is commonly accepted, it should not be publicly funded. It could also suggest that if a viewpoint is not commonly accepted then that view point is not accurate. This statement could be looked at as hagiography in the way that it would keep new “ideas” out of the public’s easy access.

Another Congress member, Rep., Sam Johnson, feels that patriotism is a necessity of the Smithsonian. “We’ve got to get patriotism back into the Smithsonian. We want the Smithsonian to reflect real America and not something that a historian dreamed up”. This statement suggests that historians dreamt up the part of the Enola Gay exhibit that dealt with the suffering of the Japanese citizens when the bomb was dropped. Rep. Johnson seems to have no interest in the other people who suffered during World War II.

On the other side of the spectrum from hagiography is presentism. It is the tendency to misunderstand events in the past because current values and beliefs are used to evaluate those events. Many of the historians tried to tell the whole story of World War II by showing more than just the Enola Gay. David Thelen believes: “Our presentations must evoke an exhausted American marine looking forward after the crushing battle of Okinawa. But they must also evoke a mother searching the rubble of Hiroshima for her daughter and finding a lunch box with carbonized peas and rice, the only remains of her vaporized child “. While this seems like a fair representation of what “really” happened, it would seem that fifty years ago we, as Americans, would not have thought of the Japanese as victims.

To question the use of the bomb could also be considered presentism. The “commonly accepted viewpoint”, (until recently), was that the use of the bomb was a necessity. Many felt that it ended the war and saved many American lives. According to Richard H. Kohn, the purpose of the Enola Gay exhibit was: “not simply to present a historical investigation of what happened, why, and what it meant, but to revisit the American decision to use the bomb in 1945, to ask whether the bomb was needed or justified, and to suggest ‘an uncertain, potentially dangerous future for all of civilization’. To use the beliefs and values of today to reevaluate the decision to drop the bomb, does not change the fact that it was dropped. At the time that the bomb was dropped, many Americans were happy that the war was going to end and that they were going home. It would seem that not too many people would think of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb “an uncertain, potentially dangerous future for all of civilization” .

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 history the way we grew up with it, or do we add to history as we learn more?