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The Conflict Over The Enola Gay Exhibit

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History can be defined as the study of the past as it relates to the human experience. Heritage, on the other hand, can be viewed as the pieces of the past we, as humans, hold dear and place significance in. Each of these viewpoints are used to tell stories or narratives. The goals of these narratives are often very different from each other, whether it be to make money telling a story, providing correct information to the world, to promote a political agenda, etc. The purpose of these stories are often derived from the viewpoints taken, in this case heritage versus history. Even though heritage and history result in telling different stories, most of the time, they also have very much in common. The problem with having these two different …show more content…

The narrative of the events surrounding the Enola Gay can be told differently, but the facts have to be accurate. To them, leaving out details is also not something the museum should do. In this case leaving out the devastation to the Japanese people caused by the bombs, as well as statements by U.S. officials that thought the bombs were not needed could be looked upon as an inaccurate portrayal of the Enola Gay and the atomic bomb. Historians from the Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, wrote a letter to Secretary Heyman of the National Air and Space Museum outlining their complaints about the Enola Gay exhibit.2 They showed how the museum had their death totals wrong at the incidents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that they overlooked the findings that the bombs may have not been needed to be dropped for the Japanese to surrender in the war,and other critiques of the information being shown at the exhibit. I think that the first drafts of the script for the exhibit have a noble cause about them. Trying to tell a narrative about

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