Customer Reviews

An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay

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Harwit provides a very detailed and personal account of the cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibit which was perhaps the worst tragedy to befall the public presentation of history in the U.S. in a generation.

When reading Harwit's account, one is reminded of what historian Joan Scott said, "There can be no democracy worthy of the name that does not entertain criticism, that suppresses disagreement, that refuses to acknowledge difference as inevitably disruptive of consensus, and that vilifies the search for new knowledge."

This is an amazing book. It gives us an idea of how far others will go to suppress the truth and how afraid of it they are...when they can only respond to truth as if they were in an arena of threat and attack...and so, riddled with that sort of delusive thinking, can only respond with threats and attacks themselves, which is what all those good old boys were doing when they started hyperventilating over the planned Enola Gay exhibit that Harwit was overseeing.

I was an American Legion student governor, as well as an American Legion counselor in a Boys State, government study program and I was a student of Martin Harwit's at Cornell University..both within a five year span. It was a Midwestern American Legion Boys State program of which I was damn proud. I'd met few "foreigners" prior to my arrival at Cornell and maintained a firm identity as a kind of "how the hell are ya, my name's _______ and I'm damn glad to meet ya" midwesterner. I was and am "damn proud" to be an American, more grateful and humbled to be an American than anything else. I accidentally landed in one of Mr. Harwit's College Scholar seminars at Cornell one semester and had a kind of intellectual epiphany over the next few months...about the relation of technique in the experimental sciences and the creative arts. Here was a real educator, a real scientist, a real man...who would invite you home for supper where you'd chat with his wife, while he chopped wood outside for the fireplace. As an All-American boy from the Midwest, I appreciated his values, I also appreciated his passion for truth.

Harwit had a painting in his home...of a woman's veiled face, it was a symbol of his own homeland of Czechoslovakia, and I learned that this man knew something about freedom and struggles that are fought for freedom. I understood from his story that he knew the prices that are paid for freedom...especially when it comes to speaking the truth to powerful institutions that can have very little interest in the truth, when the needs of that institution, or certain individuals within those institutions, are not met by the truth.

My brother was in the Navy. My father was in the Navy, served in WWII. I must admit how emabarassed I am when I see "servicemen" react to the facts, as laid out in Harwit's book, in such a cowardly, bullying way, as they did towards Mr. Harwit in Washington (when he was planning the exhibit) and how they do in some of these reviews here. I thought the whole point of being a true American, one who loved one's country, was having the guts to take a look at the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's not people like Martin Harwit who make me ashamed of being an American, it's frightened little pups who don't know how to say, "it's nobody's fault and it's everybody's responsiblity" who try to shut people up, ruin people's lives when the truth doesn't agree with their "version" of it.

But I don't want to give the impression that I'm so naive to think that this doesn't happen in America. Nor do I think that Harwit was as "blind and naive" about the "wolves in the woods" as is suggested in a review here. But Harwit is responsible. Harwit did have a job to do. Harwit, a former serviceman himself, was going to do his duty...just like the pilot of the Enola Gay did his. He had to mount a responsible, thorough exhibit...as well researched and laid out as Harwitt expected our papers to be in his classes at Cornell.

Harwit, in taking responsiblity, invites and reaches out to others, to share in a dialogue, the kind of dialogue the Enola Gay exhibit would have sparked; but unfortunately, some cannot be reponsible for the dialogue, because they are afraid of their own damn shadows, they think that the hand of responsiblity or the process of paying attention and being heard is a fault-finding process, a finger pointing at them, because they feel guilty as hell inside, paranoid perhaps, but in reality, have nothing to fear.

Listen WWII veterans and all Americans and all Japanese citizens and all members of the global village: the atom bomb is nobody's fault...and it's everyone's responsiblity. Let's say it again just to make sure it's not misunderstood and nobody runs with a tail between their legs to get some politician to start censoring the internet, not because of the pornography that's all over it, but because somebody's saying it's America's fault that the bomb was dropped...no, listen: concerning the Atom Bomb: it's nobody's FAULT and it's everybody's responsibility. O.K.? Now...what are we gonna do about it? Do we have the abiity to respond and do we understand that we'll be saying quite a bit about ourselves in how we respond?

To avoid that responsiblity by getting itchie, bitchie and twitchie about something that doesn't make us feel like our patriotic poop tastes like chocolate ice cream...shows the real danger in America...not that of an atom bomb...but the way we think! It reminds me of what Albert Einstein once said, "...the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything...except our way of thinking..." Einstein understood, as demonstrated by the folks who attacked Harwit in D.C. and who still maintain that, in his book, he's trying to undermine the lives and efforts of American servicemen during WWII, that the way people think and act on their thoughts is far more dangererous than a bomb. Why, a split atom can change everything in the world...except for one thing: a stubborn, proud, nescient, fearful man's MIND.

We need to change the way we think about talking about the atom bomb and about what happened when the atom bomb was dropped...we need to learn how to be responsible in the way that Harwit teaches us to be. He has taught me more about real American values, especially when it comes to speaking the truth, facing the truth and taking responsiblity for the truth...than any politician in Washington D.C. ever could.

In the words of that great folksinger, Vern Partlow, who wrote the great tune, Old Man Atom, The Talking Atomic Blues...

"Yes, my brothers it's plain to see... old Man Atom is here to stay... but OH, my dearly beloved...are we?"

Thank you, Mr. Harwit, for all your efforts as an educator...and, as a true educator (educare) for all your efforts in leadership.

In the relative peace which followed his resignation over the controversy surrounding the planned exhibition of the B-29 bomber 'Enola Gay',Martin Harwit, Astrophysicist and former Director of the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution has penned an extraordinary work; the chronicle in painstaking detail of one man's naivety and gradual downfall by the man himself. Whether intentionally or not, Dr. Harwit's dry, objective setting out of the facts - correspondence, the times and places of meetings, what was said and what followed - serve only to sharpen the focus. Dragged through the fires by the media, berated publicly by veterans' groups backed by military organisations and finally betrayed by his new boss, Dr. Harwit nevertheless maintains even now a bemused detachment in addressing the extraordinary debacle his planned exhibit caused.From optimistic beginnings, the plan to exhibit the Enola Gay, the plane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,is systematically attacked by well-organised opponents, many of whom have parlayed a lifetime in the military into new, post-retirement careers in lobbying. These old warriors are shrewd, well-disciplined and adept both at networking and political horse-trading - all those things the hapless Dr. Harwit is not. He, nevertheless, believes from start to finish that everyone has a valid point of view and that all of them can be accomodated in a single, sprawling, unfocussed exhibit. His plans to include items showing the horrific effects of the explosion on the Japanese civilian victims outrage the veterans, to whom the Enola Gay was the Hammer of the Righteous, bringing a swift and ultimately humane end to a war which promised to drag on into a full-scale invasion of Japan. Dr. Harwit is unfailingly fair-minded and trusting, two major errors in this arena, and the reader cannot help but feel for this essentially decent man as he plods resolutely into deepening snowdrifts, the wolves padding out of the trees on all sides. He summons evidence which directly challenges the veterans' views about the likely progress of the war after spring 1945, and carefully dissects their largely specious arguments about the charter and mission of the Smithsonian. Ultimately, though, whether he is right or wrong is immaterial, for he has taken on a vastly superior enemy and his few friends abandon him one after the other. Finally, he is left to fall on his own sword, insisting to the last that compromise is possible and a way may still be found to placate all parties.For anyone interested in the way history is interpreted by those who weren't present at its making and the violent clash of these constructed views with the stark, ever-fresh memories of the veterans themselves this is a gripping read.Even those with little interest in military history or museum curation will find themselves rooting for one side or the other, and the denoument is as good as that of many a political thriller. Dr. Harwit is to be congratulated on his impartial account; the few places in which he allows himself a comment or occasional exclamation mark serve only to highlight the cold objectivity with which he presents the story of his own downfall. At the end, the reader is left with the abiding image of a plain, decent man wandering lost in a world of enemies, none of whom he had ever dreamed he had.

Harwit writes an apologia for the Smithsonian's effort to use the Enola Gay as a vehicle for a politically correct revision of the events at the end of World War II. The controversy had many dimensions, but came to grief not because of knee-jerk reactionaries in the VFW, but because it became clear very early that the "objectivity" of Harwit and his Curators in this case was wanting. Inter alia, they attempted to impose their view of the use of nuclear weapons as an examplar of moral equivalence between the Japanese and the U.S. in World War II, much in the fashion of many historical revisionists since the 1960s. This was too much for most Americans, even today, and the effort foundered for good reason. This book does not lay out an objective view of that at all. Moreover, just as the argument on which it is based is flawed, so is the Amazon note on the book. It observes, for example, that General Eisenhower was against the use of the bomb against Japan. But General Eisenhower was not asked his opinion at the time. He was in Europe and not in on the discussions prior to the bomb's use. Only after the war was over was he asked his opinion, and he inicated at that time that he would have opposed its use, had he been asked. This is itself an incomplete picture, however, for the military men who opposed the use, before or after the fact, did so for a variety of reasons: several like FADM King opposed the use because they felt it was unnecessary: the naval blockade or further air bombardment would cause Japanese surrender. Others opposed the use on the basis of being opposed to the bombing campaign more generally. This was FADM Leahy's argument, for example. The problem with the Harwit exhibit, and the book, is that the Japanese were to be treated in isolation as though the atomic bombing was the first event, rather than a culminating event of the war. It was as though the Holocaust Museum were trying to show the harsh treatment of the Nazi death camp guards by the Allies at the end of the war, without the context of what went before. This lack of balance, in the sense of the context of the times in which the decisions and actions were taken, is what became fatal flaws in the Enola Gay exhibit. And Harwit still does not seem to understand, he seems to equate any and all opposition to his "reasonable" views as a right-wing reactionary response. The book is not "balanced" or objective, it is simply an effort to excuse a flawed effort which failed on its "merits."

I've had a very close relationship with the National Air & Space Museum--I was a Verville Fellow there in 1989--so I am not reflexively opposed to a museum exhibition about the atomic bomb. But Mr. Harwitt's big mistake was to think that NASM could rewrite history without creating a firestorm. This was not a case of a liberal beset by conservatives--though that happened also. It was a case of revisionist history caught by the facts.

In the aftermath of the Enola Gay flap, Mr. Harwitt left NASM, and the museum has been a better place for his departure. I've seen the change in my visits there. There is a nice balance now between veterans of the military air services on the one hand, and academic museum curators on the other. This balance is going to be difficult to maintain in the future, as the worlds of academia and the military grow farther apart. But the tenure of Admiral Don Engen (and now his Marine Corps successor) has been a great advance over the Harwitt years.

My advice is not to bother with this apologia, and instead to read some of the worthwhile books written by NASM staff members like Don Lopez and Robert Mikesh.

Revisionist spreading FUD as retribution for his dismissal after being caught in his misrepresentation. The "Da Vinci Code" of WWII literature.

Harwit's chronicle reeks of PC (political constipation) complaint. It would be laughable were it not such a serious subject. Harwit and his lot demonstrate quite well what happens when revisionist historical efforts run amok. I'd recommend it though--in the spirit of keep your friends close but your enemies closer. Of course, I'm biased to a fault: both my grandfather and stepfather were part of the Pacific War and could likely have added to the mounting casualties at war's end (i.e. Iwo Jima, Okinawa). I'm not insensitive to what thousands of Japanese civilians suffered (although they supported their government more than the initial exhibit acknowledged), but I'm sure Truman wasn't about to trade American lives for a ban on the bomb. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the Emperor and his military advisors. Let's stop haunting every American conflict with the ghost of Vietnam!

Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer, I read this book just to see what the mind set was of a revisionist liberal, its sad that as time goes by the memory of our veterans will be remembered in this way, I for one am glad that Mr harwitt lost his job on this issue but I know someday there will be someone just like Mr. Harwitt who will try to make us feel guilty for winning world war two but that there will not be as many veterans still alive to fight him. I'm a 35 year old former navy enlisted man and my grand father served honorably in the Pacific during the war and was slated to be part of any future operation agains the japanese home Islands He for one was relieved that it never happened. In closing i would likek to say this did mr harwitt forget that japan attacked us on a sunday morning at pearl harbor but somehow he tried to make us feel bad about being an American, the best page in the whole book is 289 when Mr Tibbets summed up the whole issue in what took harwitt 425 pages to do.