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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022

Disputes over Public Memory of U.S. Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Case of Smithsonian’s Enola Gay Exhibitions (1994–2003)

From the book Instrumentalizing the Past

  • Grzegorz Nycz

Abstract

The paper analyses the U.S. memory politics dispute of veterans’ associations and intellectuals for and against the atomic bombings as a mean to end WWII despite Japan’s fierce resistance in the context of Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibits between 1994 and 2003. The dispute concerned alternatives to nuclear weapons. The first discussed exhibition case (1994) was centred on the broader context of the bombings (WWII losses of the U.S.) as a veterans’ expected scenario of the exhibition. The 2003 discussion was driven by leftist opposition to G.W. Bush military policies and protests of Japanese atomic victims organizations against the depiction of Enola Gay mission as heroic

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