The displays themselves had little historical context. The museum, with the help of the aviation industry and military, had become a showcase of American triump and ingenuity. Some questioned whether the Enola Gay and the dropping of the bombs met that mission. The mission of the Smithsonian, as chartered, was celebratory in nature and intended to be a "repository" for equipment and devices that represent advances in aviation. After all, the mission had been a milk run and was simply a continuation of the strategic bombing policy developed by General Curtis LeMay to firebomb Japanese cities, part of the "morale" campaign that had originated in Europe. The military representatives saw little purpose.
It was the post-Vietnam War executive director and board members who were the most anxious to create an Enola Gay exhibit. They argued the war could have been ended without use of the bomb, which, according to Luce, challenged the "Christian conscience." Ironically, protests against use of the bomb, was not a recent phenomenon, in fact, protests from the right, including Henry Luce, had been voiced in 1945. While the desire to represent multiple points of view may be laudable, they should have expected a backlash. Linenthal had been involved in the 1993 Little Big Horn display controversy, and frankly should have know better than to get entangled in the Enola Gay disputation. This book was an attempt by the essayists to address the issues raised by their detractors. Historians are typically ill-prepared and powerless to defend themselves against these kinds of polemical attacks. The text then was politicized, attacked by the right as un-American, promoted by the left as accurate and representing a multicultural perspective. The content, which portrayed the horror wrecked upon the Japanese pissed off many, including Senator Dole, who had been seriously injured in WWII and who was then running for president.
The text accompanying the display originally was characteristic of what Hoffer describes as the "new History," which portrayed the United States in a more nuanced manner and with less rah-rah, often seeing events from different points of view. History is all about stories, what the tell us and what they reveal about us. Two narratives merged in the abortive display proposed by the Smithsonian of the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: the successful ending to a long and devastating war and the devastation of two Japanese cities.