American History

The article focuses on the Enola Gay exhibition which was displayed at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in mid-1995, as well as the criticisms and a few praises it gathered from different stakeholder groups. The author breaks down the event in time slices that coincide with the release of script drafts for the exhibit. For each time slice, the author discusses what the section is all about and the reactions it provoked from stakeholders. The author made use of actual quotes from key personalities such as John Correll of Air Force Magazine to more effectively present all sides of the story to the Enola Gay exhibition.

The article lengthily discusses the initial script of the exhibit which drew sharp criticisms from various reputable institutions and organizations. Critics argued that, as a whole, the first draft was unable to accurately present the whole story of the Hiroshima bombing, and was, in fact, misleading because of both the content and the way it was packaged. The initial script was seen to be anti-American and pro-Japanese, which was ironic because NASM is an American institution. Many government officials and war veterans also took offense in the fact that the script seemed to question the motives behind the bombing, and dramatically presented its negative effects on the Japanese, making Americans look like heartless beasts that devoured hapless Japanese victims.  

Pressured by its stakeholders, NASM officials attempted to revise the script and accommodate their corrections and edits, thus producing several more drafts scripts within a few months. This is when stakeholders from the other side of the sphere started throwing equally harsh criticisms at NASM officials. They claimed that NASM allowed itself to be dictated upon by key stakeholders on what information should be included in the exhibit and how it should be communicated to the public. This, then, seemed to reduce NASM from a reputable museum to a puppet controlled by high-ranking government officials. Critics from other civic and non-government organizations also criticized NASM for hiding some important facts or sugarcoating the real story behind the Hiroshima bombing to avoid offending key stakeholders.

This incident was a big blow not only to NASM but to all other highly respected museums as well. It showed that museums can be subjected to strong criticisms and pressure from stakeholders which, in reality, can be considered censorship of the kind of information they can share with the public.  

To prevent this scenario from happening in the future and to protect museums from this unnecessary information screening from stakeholders, they should strengthen their personality as independent and neutral institutions which present facts based on sound research and studies to educate the public about important lessons in history.

Similarly, government officials must accept the fact that their countrys history may not always be a clean slate but it is their responsibility to share the true story to their people. By true, I mean unbiased, not tweaked to cover up some of their mistakes, and not sugarcoated to minimize the impacts of their wrongdoings in the past.

This is not to say, of course, that museums will be granted absolute freedom of expression without undergoing rigorous research and study, as well as public consultations to ensure that they have the correct information. Museums must be able to prove that their proposed exhibit materials are objective and backed up by hard facts.

To give a more large-scale perspective on this, the article could have looked at other examples of reputable museums that have been subjected to criticisms and pressure from their stakeholders, and how they were able to overcome this predicament.