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The controversy over how history should represent dropping an atom bomb on Japan came to a head in 1994 when the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum drafted an exhibit entitled "The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War" around the refurbished Enola Gay to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in 1995. On the other hand, some people have said that it inflicted horrible carnage on the civilian population of a country on the verge of surrender or total defeat anyway and inaugurated a potentially catastrophic nuclear arms race and the Cold War - making it the subject of much debate in our time. On the one hand, it successfully ended a long and bloody World War II and was almost universally applauded at that time for saving many lives in the long run. That event has a curious double meaning in our history. Tibbets, Jr., piloting the B-29 bomber Enola Gay, dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima. So here, I examine a supposedly uncomfortable, unpredictable, uncontrollable and uncertain public conflict to demonstrate analytically that it is none of these.Do you want to do an exhibit to make veterans feel good, or do you want an exhibition that will lead our visitors to think about the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan? Frankly, I don't think we can do both. We are, then, stuck with a paradox of thinking like naive empiricists, wherein we ignore the obvious and shun the uncomfortable, leaving us in no better a position than if we had done nothing at all. Ironically, once a form of conflict intervention becomes normal or predictable it is likely to receive even less critical examination.
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As conflict specialists, we do not have to be pressured to live in a world of the "thrill of victory or the agony of defeat" if we learn to accept the assumption I make here that there is likely more to be learned from so called "failed" public conflicts than from those that are deemed "normal" cases. This paper is not about failure but about the hidden riches of information, knowledge and wisdom we can gain from a critical examination of less than perfect cases. I contend that as conflict scholars and practitioners, we have deliberately done ourselves and the public a great disservice by ignoring cases like the Enola Gay. In fact, it makes sense for scholars of conflict resolution to place as much emphasis on what works and what does not-for we ultimately learn more from mistakes than we do from success. The reason for studying this "failed" public conflict is to point out the major benefits that such cases have in regard to our understanding of the factors, dynamics and observable patterns that are endemic of many types of public conflicts. It can more accurately be described as a stalemate and ultimately a lose-lose proposition even in light of the many opportunities that arose that could have produced at least a partial if not total agreement. This conflict did not end with people reaching consensus, ceremoniously signing documents, shaking hands and piling accolades upon one another for solving a serious problem. This paper presents findings from a two year field research project focusing on the public conflict that erupted over the Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM).