The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U.S. government decided to use the A-Bomb against Japan. Wallace scrutinizes the actual plans for the exhibit and investigates the ways in which the controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media, and the general public. Whether his subject is multimillion dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Mike Wallace shows how their depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left out, and who is authorized to make the decisions.
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Background Information
The United States slid slowly into the position previously held by France in Indochina and became engulfed in a long war in Vietnam. The first and next-to-last use of atomic weapons in warfare was the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945.