HISTORY’S The Enola Gay Exhibit and Curating America’s Past
FALLOUT BY COLIN QUINN
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 U.S. Air Force military plane, dropped an atomic bomb code-named “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. As the skies raged, silhouettes of men, women, and children were plastered onto building bricks. The casualties were immense: around 70,000 Japanese citizens perished. Three days
later, Bockscar, another U.S. Air Force B-29 airplane, dropped the second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 Japanese citizens. What seemed to be the end of the bloodiest war in human history was only a prelude to the beginning of the Cold War, the dawn of the nuclear age, and the growing polarization of Amer-
ican politics. In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian was set to air an exhibit displaying the Enola Gay B-29 airplane. Curators Tom Crouch and Michael Neufeld as well as National Air and Space Museum Director Martin Harwit wanted to create an exhibit that analyzed the bomb17 23
