This “scandal” has to be set in the political context of the 1990’s: cultural wars, the 1994 Republican victory in Congress, the emerging new patriotism.
The offensive launched against the exhibit as unpatriotic by the lobbies of the Air Force Association and the American Legion was relayed by eighteen Congressmen who asked for the resignation of the director of the Museum and the cancellation of the project. The planned National Air and Space Museum’s exhibit in Washington for the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to put and end to World War II was meant to raise such large questions as: Why were the bombs used? Were there alternatives? Why were civilians targeted? How was the bomb linked to the emerging Cold War? The exhibit did not stick to the “official” version according to which the dropping of the bomb only aimed at saving American lives.
