In the wake of that decision I resigned as the museum's director and left the Smithsonian. Michael Heyman, in office only four months at the time, scrapped the exhibit as requested, and promised to personally oversee a new display devoid of any historic context. The Institution's chief executive, Smithsonian Secretary I. She describes his experience training to be a radar operator and in the 509th Composite Group.
In this interview, Nelson discusses how she met her husband after the war. The Smithsonian tnstitution, of which the National Air and Space Museum is a part, is heavily dependent on congressional funding. Nelson, who was the VHF radio operator on the Enola Gay on the Hiroshima atomic bombing mission.
Fifty years later, the National Air and Space Museum was in the final stages of preparing an exhibition on the Enola Gay's historic mission when eighty-one members of Congress angrily demanded cancellation of the planned display and the resignation or dismissal of the museum's director. World War II was over and a nuclear arms race had begun.
No war had ever seen such instant devastation. There it exploded, destroying Hiroshima and eighty thousand of her citizens. For forty three seconds, the world's first atomic bomb plunged through six miles of clear air to its preset detonation altitude. At 8:15 A.M., August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay released her load.
