May 27 12:46 AM US/Eastern
WASHINGTON, May 27 (AP) - (Kyodo) — A curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum said it is unlikely to describe the devastation caused to Hiroshima by the B-29 bomber it exhibits, though he says such a display would be a "good challenge" for the museum.
Japanese victims have called for the museum to create an exhibit that gives visitors a better understanding of the impact of the 1945 bombing.
In a recent interview with Kyodo News, Dik Daso, curator for modern military aircraft, attributed his view chiefly to a lack of space at the museum for any descriptive exhibits, calling it "primarily a technology museum" and a wide-open hangar where, unlike a gallery, objects are displayed with just "cursory" mentions.
"None of these objects here have other than cursory mention, like this airplane shot down another airplane," he said. "There's no descriptive information out on any of these of what they were capable of doing...And without a particular exhibit space to talk about this kind of information, it's very difficult here."
"And it doesn't mean it's not something we would like to talk about, but it's just not, it's not possible to do it the proper way," he added.
Asked if the museum could again try to exhibit materials on the damage of atomic-bombing after a failed attempt in 1995, when its special exhibition ended up only with the restored Enola Gay bomber in light of protests from World War II veterans, Daso said, "I doubt it."
"I think, intellectually, it can be done from a historical point of view in an objective way," he said. "I think it would be a challenge, but I think it would be a good challenge."
But he also said, "I think you'll see that more time would have to go by before World War II veterans, for example, would want to see something that reminds them of the end of the war or something like that."
The interview coincided with a key U.N. conference to enhance the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is slated to end nearly a month-long negotiation in New York on Friday.
Many Japanese atomic-bomb survivors and their supporters visited New York to join an anti-nuclear rally held on the eve of the May 3 opening of the international meeting, hoping to gain momentum from U.S. President Barack Obama's call for a world without nuclear weapons, which earned him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
"To be able to tell a story like this in a different location is a good thing, because people who go there get to see a different, slightly expanded version of the end of the war as they would if they come here. This place here is primarily a technology museum," Daso said.
The 1995 exhibition, which has been the only special event for the Enola Gay, turned out to be very popular and drew about 4 million people through its roughly three years of duration, according to Daso.
Scrapped in 1960 but restored later, the bomber has since 2003 been put on display at an annex of the museum on a permanent basis with part of its explanatory text reading it "dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan" on Aug. 6, 1945.
Posts
