The Enola Gay Controversy - Round 2

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6/2/1994. Letter to Correll and others by Ned Humphreys details a meeting with NASM officials on the exhibit in which "the atmosphere was hostile and defensive from the beginning": "Every opinion point I advanced, relating to the fractured and unrestored status of Enola Gay or disputed aspects of the forthcoming display, was doggedly contradicted and their position unswervingly and emphatically defended.": [PDF]
6/9/1994. Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets rips the proposed exhibit in an award acceptance speech: "I suggest that the Enola Gay be preserved and displayed properly -- and alone, for all the world to see. She should be presented as a peace keeper and as the harbinger of a cold war kept from going 'hot.'": "The Reminiscences of Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, Jr.," Columbia University Oral History Collection, Part IV (1-219): done in 1960 [PDF]; "Training the 509th for Hiroshima," by Paul Tibbets, Air Force Magazine, August 1973, 49-55. [FullText]; Other statements by Tibbets can be found in: Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., The Tibbets Story. New York: Stein and Day, 1978. [FullText]; Related perspectives: Good to read along with Tibbets is "the" classic, oft-cited veteran response, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the bombing: "Hiroshima: A Soldier's View," by Paul Fussell, New Republic, April 22, 1981: 26-30. [FullText]; See "The Plane" section of Tibbets' web site: http://www.theenolagay.com/plane.html (go to bottom of page) [http://www.theenolagay.com/plane.html]; See interviews of Tibbets: "Man Who Dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima Wants Exhibit Scuttled," Washington Post, 01/30/95, D01. [FullText]; Paul W. Tibbets, Return of the Enola Gay. Columbus: Mid Coast Marketing, 1998 (same as other Tibbets' books but with added last chapter) [FullText]; "Paul Tibbets, Pilot of the Enola Gay, by Bob Greene, Chicago Tribune, 01/10/99 - 02/01/99 [http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister/tibbets.html]; See also the quote from Enola Gay bombardier Tom Ferebee in a statement by Senator Jesse Helms at the time of his death: "Tom Ferebee Saw His Duty and He Did It at Hiroshima," Congressional Record -- Senate, 03/27/00, vol. 146, no. 35 [PDF]
6/17/1994. Harwit writes Tibbets, asking him to participate in a video for the exhibit: "I have read the statement you released last week and am concerned that, while rumors about the exhibition have reached you, you have not had an opportunity to see for yourself the whole script. . . . General Tibbets, you have always served your country when it needed you. Could we not ask you to once more take up that challenge and provide the American people your views on the events that so dramatically brought World War II to a conclusion and forever changed people's lives?": [PDF]
6/21/1994. NASM curator Michael Neufeld considers draft #2 of the exhibit basically a "finished product, minor wording changes aside" in a letter to the NASM advisory board.: [PDF]
6/28/1994. Correll provides a detailed critique of the May 31 second draft of the exhibit, now called "The Last Act," concluding that though there are "commendable changes," the revisions are less than expected, and the exhibit remains "unbalanced" and a "partisan interpretation" that most veterans will find objectionable.: "The Smithsonian Plan for the Enola Gay: A Report on the Revisions," by John T. Correll, June 28, 1994 [https://web.archive.org/web/20101227051132/http://afa.org/media/enolagay/04-06.html]
6/30/1994. A letter from Ken Gross. The AFA strategy includes lobbying and (attaching a formal request from Correll) using the Freedom of Information Act: "The Association believes, after hundreds of hours of research and analysis by historical and aerospace experts, that the proposed exhibit is politically biased and reinterprets history in a manner that distorts the role of the United States in World War II. The gravity of this distortion is exacerbated by the portrayal of the United States as irresponsible in the use of nuclear weapons.": [PDF]
6/31/1994. Sampling of coverage in June by major media: "From which perspective should history view Hiroshima?": Enola Gay Display Evokes Passion; Even before It Opens," Robert L. Koenig, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 06/09/94, 1A. [FullText]