The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki sparked a significant scholarly and popular dispute in the United States. A bevy of books appeared wrestling with questions concerning the necessity, the wisdom, and the morality of America's use of the new weapon in 1945. An even more inflammatory and public controversy centered on the text developed to accompany the planned exhibit at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution of a part of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the American B-29 aircraft that dropped the atomic weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Supposedly reflecting the most recent scholarly findings and self-consciously unafraid to puncture prevailing national “myths,” the Smithsonian text gave a privileged voice to an interpretation that held that the atomic bomb was not necessary to either end the Pacific War nor to save American lives. The predictable public outrage apparently caught the Smithsonian curators by surprise. The historian J. Samuel Walker recounted that “veterans' groups led a fusillade of attacks that accused the Smithsonian of making the use of the bomb appear aggressive, immoral, and unjustified.” With considerable congressional support, the aging veterans, members of the proverbial greatest generation, forced the Smithsonian to back down, to modify the text considerably, and to alter the thrust of the exhibit. This led in turn to lengthy lamentations that blatant political pressure had censored a well-researched, historical presentation.