A hole in history: America suppresses the truth about Hiroshima.

• Author: Mitchell, Greg
• Position: Cover Story

In the past year, I've found myself near the center of the struggle over the Smithsonian exhibit commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has never been easy for Americans to reconcile dropping the bomb with a sense of ourselves as a decent people. Because this conflict remains unresolved, it causes pain, anger, and confusion. There is no historical event Americans are more sensitive about: Hiroshima remains a raw nerve.

This raw nerve was responsible for the controversy that erupted over the Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Officials have called the exhibit the most divisive ever attempted at any of the Smithsonian's national museums.

Nearly every newspaper (most prominently, The Washington Post) attacked the Smithsonian when curators designed an exhibit that would fully explore the decision to use the bomb and discuss its effects. Columnist George Will and members of Congress accused the curators of being anti-American. Both houses of Congress passed resolutions condemning the exhibit. House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared that the Smithsonian had become "a plaything for leftwing ideologies."

Yielding to pressure, the museum made massive deletions and revisions in the script for the show, culminating in a humiliating, line-by-line editing session with representatives of the American Legion. What emerged was a script that endorses in every detail the official version of Hiroshima that has endured since 1945: that the atomic bombings were necessary to prevent an invasion of Japan and save up to one million American lives. The exhibit failed to explore questions raised by scholars based on crucial evidence that has emerged over the past three decades. And, prodded by the veterans, officials cut every comment critical of the bombing - even one by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who asserted in 1948 that Japan was already defeated at the time of the atomic attack.

At one point in the Smithsonian controversy, I was virtually the only outsider who had analyzed every version of the script. Dozens of journalists, scholars, writers, filmmakers, and peace activists called for information. I talked to officials at the museum who bitterly (although not for attribution) denounced museum director Martin Harwit and Smithsonian secretary Michael Heyman for "selling out" the exhibit. I even submitted a 10,000-word critique of the script to Harwit, pointing out the dozens of factual errors or distortions. This resulted in three very minor changes in the script.

When a group of scholars met with Harwit in November, I pointed out some of the odd juxtapositions in the American Legion-approved script: for example, there were seven photographs of the mushroom cloud and only one image of dead victims of the bomb; there was one photo of survivors suffering from radiation disease and two pictures of Americans treating these patients.

Barton Bernstein of Stanford University, perhaps the leading authority on the archival records of Truman's decision, challenged the script's estimate of the number of Americans the military expected to die in the invasion of Japan - deaths allegedly averted only by the use of the bomb. The script estimated at least a quarter of a million; Bernstein proposed the figure 63,000. Harwit said he would look into it.

A few weeks later, Harwit notified the Legion that, after studying the matter, he planned to insert Bernstein's figure in the script. The Legion, other veterans' groups, their many allies in the new Republican Congress, and the media protested this tiny deviation from the political line. The script maintained the official story at every turn and continued to ignore any contrary evidence. But Harwit had the temerity to question the official narrative and for this he would be punished.

Lobbied by veterans, Congress threatened to cut off funds for the Smithsonian unless secretary Heyman canceled the exhibit. In late January, he capitulated. But the Enola Gay, he said, would still go on display, marked only by a neutral plaque with words to the effect: "This is the plane that dropped the bomb."

Legion commander William Detweiler hailed this as a victory over...