Marathon meetings during the last two weeks between museum officials and representatives of the American Legion, one of the groups leading the criticism, resulted in the modifications. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Pacific forces during the war, said the initial low estimate of potential invasion casualties in the exhibit was preposterous.
William Manchester, who teaches at Wesleyan University and is the author of a biography of Gen. Mike Fetters, a spokesman for the National Air and Space Museum, where the Enola Gay will be exhibited, said the "script," which is the text of the exhibit, was distributed to veterans groups and scholars for comments at the beginning of the year. Smithsonian officials said they always welcomed comments on how they would present history.
The museum now concedes that reliable military estimates ranged from 260,000 casualties in that first phase to one million American casualties if forces had to fight their way across the Japanese islands.Īt issue throughout the Smithsonian debate, which raged through Congress and history faculties, was not only how the bombing was to be presented but also who would get to influence the content of the exhibit, at Air and Space, which is perhaps the most popular museum in the world, with eight million visitors each year. Smithsonian curators initially planned to say that if American forces had invaded Japan, the United States would have suffered 31,000 casualties in the first 30 days of fighting and that this might have been enough to subdue Japan.