The original script, completed on January 14, 1994, contained five sections: 'A Fight to the Finish,' depicting the last year of World War II 'The Decision to Drop the Bomb,' raising questions about the need to use nuclear weapons against Japan 'The World's First Atomic Strike Force,' illuminating the experiences of the bomber pilots 'Cities at War' describing ground zero and 'The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,' discussing the beginning of the arms race and the Cold War. In the years leading up to the 50 th anniversary of these attacks, National Air and Space Museum director Martin Harwit and curators Tom Crouch and Michael Neufeld imagined an exhibition that would provide a balanced look at the bombings.
The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later. In 1994, the National Air and Space Museum completed an exhibition script titled “The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War.” Over the next year, this script, and the versions following it, would generate one of the greatest controversies the Smithsonian ever experienced.
