To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the National Air and Space Museum, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, made plans for an exhibit featuring a section of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. Curators consulted with an advisory committee of experts on the use of the bomb in an effort to ensure that the exhibit was historically accurate and consistent with recent scholarly findings. Although museum officials were acutely aware that the subject was controversial, they were ill-prepared for the outrage that early drafts of the script triggered. Veterans' groups led a fusillade of attacks that accused the Smithsonian of making the use of the bomb appear aggressive, immoral, and unjustified. The Wall Street Journal, for example, condemned “scriptwriters [who] disdain any belief that the decision to drop the bomb could have been inspired by something other than racism or blood-lust.”

Eventually, the Smithsonian modified its script in response to the complaints of veterans, members of Congress, and a chorus of other critics. This, in turn, elicited protests from scholars that the museum had sacrificed historical accuracy to accommodate political pressures. The outcry over the Smithsonian's exhibit plans vividly demonstrated that the decision to use the bomb remained an emotionally charged issue, even nearly half a century after the end of World War II.