As the plane’s engines roared and its propellers spun, Tibbets looked out an open window at the crowd amassed on the runway. In the early-morning darkness of that historic day 75 years ago, Colonel Tibbets and his 11-man crew boarded the plane and began their preflight preparations. It was all leading to one day that would help end years of bloodshed and change the world forever. Even years before that, development of this revolutionary cargo began in secrecy under the direction of a physicist and an Army general in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. and his crew had practiced dropping dummy concrete bombs on targets in Wendover, Utah. And months before that, pilot Paul Tibbets Jr. Preparations on the tiny Pacific island-about 1,500 miles southeast of the plane’s intended target in Japan-had begun months before on April 3. Hours before the sun would rise over Tinian island on the morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 airplane was positioned above a specially built bomb-loading pit, as crews readied the aircraft with cargo unlike anything the world had ever known. and others explain, delivering a 10,000-pound bomb to southern Japan was a years-long endeavor that required patience, practice, and precision. Both Americans and the Japanese were meant to have the opportunity to see the exhibit and to try to understand the complex.On August 6, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb designed at Los Alamos on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. To the Smithsonian, the Enola Gay was instrumental in events that changed our world. The fourth section was intended to reveal the horrible destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were bombed, and the final section of the exhibition was scheduled to discuss the problems of nuclear weapons and the arms race that followed the war. The third was to focus on the handling of the bomb from the secret factories to the loading onto the plane. The next would explain the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb. The first section was to deal with Japanese invasions and the attack on Pearl Harbor. The exhibition was supposed to contain five controversial narrative sections. This dispute and various other events led to the controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit and its eventual cancellation.
The question was whether the Smithsonian Institution's exhibition of Enola Gay was non-biased, or if, instead, it was intended as an instrument of propaganda. Those who opposed the exhibit, however, were concerned with the credibility and the message it was trying to send. The Smithsonian wanted to make Americans and those who saw the exhibit reevaluate their understanding of World War II. The controversy surrounding the Enola Gay exhibit stems from disagreements between the Smithsonian, historians, members of Congress, veterans, and those who were there for the event that shook the world. A script was written to point out the different phases that took place before the decision to drop the bomb and the aftermath of that decision.
Michael Heyman, Secretary of the Smithsonian, had a vision of creating an exhibit that would inspire people to have more profound discussions about the atom bomb. In 1995, the Enola Gay exhibit was intended to open for the 50th anniversary of the day the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Japan.