"FullText" links provide a connection to electronic or print copies provided by the Lehigh Libraries and other services, such as electronic abstracts and interlibrary loan requesting.

5/1/1995. Air Force Magazine publishes its eighth article: "World War II does not call for neutral interpretation. There was a right and wrong side. The right side won. That is what we remember this anniversary year -- no conciliatory adjustments are required" [to Japan].

"Japan's Struggle With History," by John T. Correll, Air Force Magazine, 05/95, 5. [http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/07-12.html]

"VFW Honors AFA for Work on Enola Gay," Air Force Magazine, 05/95, 152. [FullText]

"Air Force Magazine Revisionism," MSgt. Merle C. Olmstead, Air Force Magazine, 05/95, 8. Letter. [FullText]

5/2/1995. Secretary Heyman announces the resignation: "For all of Dr. Harwit's many contributions to the Institution, I wish to express my gratitude."

"Official Resigns Over Exhibit of Enola Gay," New York Times, 05/02/95, A19. "What we were doing sounded logical," says Harwit. [FullText]

5/2/1995. NASM Director Martin Harwit resigns: "There is no choice but to resign: the Museum's welfare and future are too important."

[PDF]

5/2/1995. Secretary Heyman announces the resignation: "For all of Dr. Harwit's many contributions to the Institution, I wish to express my gratitude."

"Air and Space Museum Chief Resigns," by Eugene L. Meyer, Washington Post, 05/03/95, A12. Harwit resigns "to satisfy the museum's critics and allow it to move forward." [FullText]

"Air and Space Museum Chief Resigns in Enola Gay's Wake," by Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, 05/03/95, A3. "Relations between Mr. Harwit and Mr. Heyman further soured over a plan to honor Enola Gay curators." [FullText]

"Head of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum Resigns," by Mike Feinsilber, Oakland Tribune, 05/03/95. [FullText]

"Asides: Enola Gay Finale," Wall Street Journal, 05/03/95, A14. "The most revealing result was that the exhibit curators were surprised at the public reaction." [FullText]

"Museum Head Stepping Down over Enola Gay," by Andrea Stone, USA Today, 05/03/95, 4A. Harwit a casualty of "controversy and divisiveness." [FullText]

"Resignation Right," San Antonio Express-News, 05/04/95. "Martin Harwit did the right thing. . . . Harwit and other museum planners obviously did not understand history." [FullText]

"Casualty of War Exhibit," Knoxville News-Sentinel, 05/05/95, A16. "[James Smithson's] goal requires that the Smithsonian navigate between jingoism and its opposite, cynicism. The institution is now stuck in the shoals of the latter -- a poor position from which to honestly tell America's story." [FullText]

"Smithsonian: After the Shouting," Washington Post, 05/07/95, C6. "It's not clear what such [Congressional] hearings can or should accomplish. . . . Enough already. Exhibits are not the place to dictate the appropriate or accepted view of a contested historical episode. It would be no improvement at all to try to do the same thing through congressional hearings." [FullText]

"Mr. Harwit Bails Out," Washington Times, 05/08/95, A24. "Senator Stevens' forthcoming hearings therefore should not only keep the pressure on the Smithsonian but even turn it up, inquiring into the real and deeper sources of anti-Americanism in the class that runs the federal government's cultural apparat and exploring concrete ways by which the public honoring of America's heritage can be returned to the hands of those who really honor rather than despise it." [FullText]

"The Enola Gay's Final Casualty," U. S. News & World Report, 05/15/95, 18. Harwit's "colleagues stood and clapped. They hated to see him leave." [FullText]

5/9/1995. Heyman denies rumors "that conservative Republicans are wielding undue influence over museum exhibits," cancels an exhibit dealing with Vietnam, and welcomes the appointment of Enola Gay critic Senator Sam Johnson as a member of the Board of Regents.

"Smithsonian Boss Scoffs at Rumors GOP Rules Exhibits," Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, 05/09/95, A6. [FullText]

5/11/1995. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearings. Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, 104th Congress, First Session, on The Smithsonian Institution Management Guidelines for the Future. May 11 and 18, 1995. Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1995.

Table of contents: [PDF]

Opening Statements by Senators Stevens and Ford (1-4): [PDF]

Sweeney (4-13): [PDF]

Cooper (13-17): [PDF]

Smith (28-31): [PDF]

Harrington, American Legion (17-27): [PDF]

Manhan (31-34): [PDF]

Question Period #1 (35-40): [PDF]

Stevens, Ford, Warner (41-44, 51): [PDF]

Johnson (44-46): [PDF]

Linenthal (46-67): [PDF]

Heyman (67-72): [PDF]

Crouch (72-78): [PDF]

Question Period #2 (78-101): [PDF]

Singer (102-7): [PDF]

Concluding Comments (107-10): [PDF]

Harwit (111-15): [PDF]

Baker (116-19): [PDF]

Coatney (120-23): [PDF]

Fic (124-31): [PDF]

Historians' Committee on Open Debate on Hiroshima (132-53): [PDF]

Merritt (154-56): [PDF]

Heyman to Senator Johnson (161-81): [PDF]

Heyman to Senator Helms (182-87): [PDF]

"Smithsonian Under Siege on Hill," by Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, 05/12/95, A10. "We believe that those responsible for the exhibit did so in a most cynical and insensitive way by using the very aircraft that thousands of World War II veterans credit with sparing them from death on the beacjes of Japan, to suggest that their lives were purchased at the price of vengeance and racism." [FullText]

"Senator Warns Smithsonian on Controversy," Jacqueline Trescott, Washington Post, 05/19/95, D6. "After reading a passage establishing Air and Space to memorialize the successes of the military, [Senator Stevens] said the charter doesn't authroize the museum to grapple with contentious historical issues." [FullText]

"Historic View: Past Truths with a Present Spin," Andrea Stone, USA Today, 05/19/95, 4A. "Are you saying taxpayer dollars ought to be used by revisionists [to attack] the accepted view of history . . . You want my grandson to look at me in the eye and say, 'Grandpa, why did you kill babies?'" [FullText]

"Senators Assail Enola Gay Exhibit," by Michael E. Ruane, Philadelphia inquirer, 05/19/95. "Smithsonian scholars and officials expressed regret at any pain their actions caused and acknowledged making mistakes. But they also defended some basic positions such as the need to interpret history." [FullText]

"The A-Bomb Controversy at the National Air and Space Museum," by Edward Linenthal, Historian 57.4 (1995): 686-94. Linenthal's statement at the hearings. [FullText]

"Smithsonian Apologizes for 'historically inaccurate' display," Japan Times, 05/20/95, 5. Heyman made the apology, "succumbing to continued pressure and criticism led by war veterans." [FullText]

AFA report: "AFA Testifies on Enola Gay," Air Force Magazine, July 1995, 90. [http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/07-15.html]

5/1995. Sampling of coverage in May by major media supporting the museum and the historians.

"Museums: Altered States," by Carla Koehl and Lucy Howard, Newsweek, 05/01/95, 6. "Stung by the furor over the Enola Gay exhibit . . . Smithsonian officials are canceling or reworking upcoming exhibits to avoid future controversy, senior staffers charge." [FullText]

"History as a Lightning Rod," by Michael Kammen, Organization of American Historians Newsletter, May 1995, 1, 6. Kammen was president of OAH: "The politicization of American history has come to resemble a destructive storm." [FullText]

"Hiroshima's New Fallout," World Press Review, May 1995: 30-31. "The mushroom cloud of Hiroshima has been blowing across the American capital again -- this time with history as its victim." [FullText]

"Smithsonian Suffers Legionnaire's Disease," by Stanley Goldberg, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1995, 28. "I resigned from the advisory board, as a protest. I was outraged that the museum administration had exposed the curators to the direct pressure of organizations such as the Air Force Association and the American Legion. And I was thunderstruck when members of Congress became actively involved. . . . That kind of thought control should have no place in a government committed to democracy. I believed that that issue had been settled in the 1950s, when McCarthyism was laid to rest. Apparently I was wrong." [FullText]

"[Forgetting the Bomb:] The Assault on History," by Martin J. Sherwin, Nation, May 15, 1995: 692-94. "We might want to consider revising Santayana's famous aphorism. . . . [it] might read: 'Those who insist only on their memories of the past are condeming the rest of us to avoid it.'" See also: http://web.archive.org/web/20021225010358/http://www.historians.org/directory/committees/sherwinop.html [FullText]

"Hiroshima: No Moral Justification," Wall Street Journal, 05/22/95, 13. Letters: "Let's admit that moral principles were suspended and accept the fact that human beings repeatedly demonstrate the capacity for extreme cruelty when the circumstances permit." "[Harry Truman's] omelet was winning the war, and if hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese men, women, and children had to die to make it, well, that was just too bad." [FullText]

"[Guest Opinion:] Misconceived Patriotism," by Barton J. Bernstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 51 (May/June 1995), 4. "Their insistence on hewing to the 'official' versions of the bomb story despoiled the very democratic values that were at stake in World War II. The veterans groups tried -- successfully -- to block free inquiry, dialogue, questioning, and dissent." [FullText]

5/1995. Sampling of coverage in May by major media supporting the exhibit critics.

"The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb," by Robert James Maddox, American Heritage, May/June 1995, 70-77. "One can only imagine what would have happened if tens of thousands of American boys had died or been wounded on Japanese soil and then it had become known that Truman had chosen not to use weapons that might have ended the war months earlier." [FullText]

"How the Legion Held Sway on Enola Gay," American Legion, May 1995, 34-36, 66. "An inside look at how the Legion's unflagging commitment to history -- and to the veterans who gave their lives to shape it -- triumphed over political correctness." [FullText]

"History Upheld," American Legion, May 1995, 16-18. "America needs no help from Japan who persists in its own delusions of victimhood and has the audacity to declare its WWII defeat a holocaust." [FullText]

"A Letter on the Enola Gay Controversy," by Martin Trow, Public Affairs Report, 05/95. "What troubles me is that so much of the media share in a vague way the anti-American prejudices . . . and will continue to portray the argument as between inconvenient truths and vengeful old veterans." [FullText]

5/23/1995. The Congressman submits an editorial from an Omaha newspaper praising the National Archives for its World War II display in which there is reference to a "citizen's committee" that said the Smithsonian should not become a "home for congratulation": "Good history isn't cheerleading. But neither does it consist of condemning earlier generations because they didn't live up to the politically correct standards of the present."

"History Properly Displayed," by Doug Bereuter, 104th Congress, 1st Session, 141 Cong Rec E 1099. [PDF]