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Scholars and citizens have long debated the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning days of World War II, but even those who have steadfastly defended the attacks have seen them as acts necessary to “save” both American and Japanese lives, not something to be hailed the way the present administration hails “smart bombs,” heat-seeking missiles, and other military-industrial-complex products. First, it can be seen as an expression of the Bush administration’s arrogant and dehumanizing militarism. The Smithsonian simply brushed the petition aside, as it did protestors who challenged the exhibit’s opening. Many historians, this author included, signed a petition to protest the museum’s uncritical and ahistorical portrayal of the Enola Gay.
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According to news reports, the plane is displayed with a plaque that calls it “the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II” and mentions without comment that it dropped the bomb. Near Washington’s Dulles Airport (named after John Foster Dulles, whose nuclear brinkmanship in the 1950s made nuclear war into a game of chicken), the Smithsonian has opened a new exhibition hall that features the Enola Gay as part of its centennial celebration of the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight. 6, 1945 – a marvel of technology? A worthy subject for a historical exhibit, rather like Disneyland’s Robot Lincoln? The Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum seems to think so. The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug.