Mark Pollock, professor of rhetoric at Loyola University Chicago, agreed that both sides' perceptions of the Enola Gay exhibit may have differed from reality. 'They (museums) are responsible not only for what is said (in an exhibit), but for what people may reasonably think is said,' Kennedy said.
Stanford University historian Barton Bernstein, whose research was used for the 60,000 estimate, complained that the Smithsonian was bowing to Congress, which controls its funding.īut museum directors must take public reaction into account when they plan exhibitions, according to National Park Service Director Roger Kennedy, former director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Veterans groups believe what had been the conventional wisdom that the death toll would have been much higher, about 230,000.
One major point of controversy was the exhibit's estimate that dropping the bomb prevented the deaths of some 60,000 U.S.
