RESEARCH

Since the mid-1990s, Japanese and American museum curators have experienced a firestorm of criticism for their exhibits on the Second World War, highlighting the relationship between museums, their audiences and the professional responsibilities of curators.

Curating controversy: exhibiting the Second World War in Japan and the United States since 1995

Laura Hein their personal experiences. It has also with- sketch out the full range of differing indi- its through their own ethical and historical drawn educational worksheets for school vidual experiences. The Nagasaki Atomic questions, leaving them ill-equipped to ntil the public battle over the Smith- children after receiving criticisms that they Bomb Museum is a significant exception, face a morally ambiguous world. Usonian National Air and Space were ‘too biased’. The museum staff obvi- in that it has incorporated the oral narra- Museum’s 1995 exhibit on the Enola ously has decided on a defensive posture tives of forced labourers from Korea. Museum exhibits on the Second World War Gay airplane and a series of conservative to maintain the status quo.1 have another largely neglected audience - attacks on Japanese museums that international visitors. Japanese museums began in 1996, curators had faced little Curators and their audiences try harder to accommodate foreign visi- criticism over exhibits related to the Sec- Other museums have handled the prob- tors than do American ones, for example ond World War in either the United States lem of criticism in a variety of ways. One with bilingual or multilingual signage. The or Japan. Both countries have many muse- is to limit war-related exhibits to uncontro- Museum demonstrates its con- ums that unabashedly celebrate military versial aspects of any given subject. This cern for international visitors by offering actions. Usually founded by military units often means focusing on the experience of no opinion on whether the United States or veterans groups, they emphasise mili- civilians and emphasising daily life on the committed a war crime. The museum’s tary strategy, the heroism of commanders home front or front lines rather than bat- silence is almost certainly out of sensitiv- and soldiers, and the ingenuity and sheer tle strategy. A second common strategy ity to American attitudes. Because, in con- force of military technology. Other muse- in both countries has been to present a trast to the United States, the near-univer- ums reject the legitimacy of war altogether. pastiche of individual experiences rather sal opinion in Japan is that the attacks on The oldest and best-attended of these is than one overarching narrative - collect- Hiroshima and Nagasaki were clearly war the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. ing memories rather than collectivising Confronting irreconcilable crimes under the definitions incorporated While there is nothing on the scale of the them. This strategy has been particularly differences into law at the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Hiroshima Museum in the United States, useful for acknowledging the sensitive his- Yet, while essential, reshaping the muse- Crimes Trials. the in proclaims a tory of race relations in the United States. um-audience relationship into a more col- very similar message. Curators can no longer choose one white laborative endeavour will never be enough. By contrast, American Second World soldier to stand in for everyone; the simple The real challenge is to negotiate between War exhibits have not included foreign- The Japanese municipal museum with one act of organising an exhibit as a collection irreconcilable groups within the public. ers in the same way that they have come of the most profoundly self-critical analyses of varied stories immediately highlights the In both nations, the ugliest fights have to include the perspectives of non-white of proportionate retribution. Indeed, peo- of the Asia-Pacific War is the Osaka Inter- specific experiences of non-whites. Ameri- occurred when the audience in question is Americans. Yet the simple act of shifting ple come to look at the Enola Gay airplane national Peace Center, or Peace Osaka, can museum exhibits on the Second World young people. Rather than allowing them one ‘s imaginative focus to individuals because they already see it as a complex which opened in the Osaka Castle Park War now routinely discuss what the D-Day to reach their own conclusions about the rather than nation-sized protagonists symbol. If, as museum professionals now in 1991. (The Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum in New Orleans calls the ‘lamen- war, both American critics of the Enola Gay makes the nationality of those individuals emphasise, visitors bring their own mean- Museum is similarly critical.) The muse- table American irony of World War II’, that exhibit and Japanese ones of Peace Osaka seem far less important. The National D- ing to exhibits, display of the Enola Gay will um evolved out of efforts by local citizens the armed forces were racially segregated wanted sole interpretive authority. Ameri- Day Museum in New Orleans collects rem- forever provide an invitation to debate the groups to remember the impact of the war throughout the war.2 Similarly, ‘A More can veterans who opposed the original iniscences of the war from all participants moral and strategic legitimacy of the use of on Osaka, particularly the approximately Perfect Union’ at the National Museum of Enola Gay exhibit resisted displaying Japa- - including Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese the bomb in August 1945 even though the fifty American air-raid attacks. In order to American History, which opened in 1987, nese civilians in a sympathetic manner - - not just American, and acknowledges that exhibit itself attempts to assert only one explain why the city was attacked so many treated wartime internment of Japanese people who indisputably had been harmed racism played a large role in intensifying the point of view. times, the planners agreed on an exhibit Americans as a violation of civil rights that by American state action - because they violence on both sides in the Asia-Pacific that portrayed Japan as not only the victim diminished constitutional protections for feared that viewing it would turn young theatre. Moreover, attention to the human- Laura Hein, but also the aggressor in Asia. The exhibit all Americans. 3 Americans against their own government. ity of Japanese-Americans automatically Department of History, also explained that Osaka Castle Park was Tom Crouch, one of the Enola Gay cura- calls attention to Japanese nationals, since Northwestern University, used as a munitions factory during the In the United States, the controversy over tors, recalls that one of the key moments in immigrants were not permitted to become [email protected] war. While this information was absolutely the Enola Gay exhibit spurred museum the negotiation process with the American U.S. citizens because they were not white. accurate, mention of it acknowledged that professionals to negotiate more with the Legion occurred over precisely this point. Notes Osaka had been a military as well as a civil- public. Many of them have concluded that A Vietnam War veteran told Crouch that Further, simply documenting the troubling 1 Akiko Takenaka interview with Ltsuki ian target, potentially justifying the Ameri- curators must give up on the idea that he had given the first script of the exhibit history of global genocide, war crimes, Kazuko, February 3, 2005 can bombardment. Their fundamental there is a single correct interpretation of an to his 13-year-old daughter to read and she state terrorism, and systematic cruelty message was that war should always be event as major and complex as the Second had been horrified by American use of the itself encourages comparative thinking. 2 See website of the National D-Day Museum avoided. World War. As Lonnie Bunch, now Director bomb on civilians. The veteran then told The International Coalition of Historic Site in New Orleans at of the National Museum of African Ameri- Crouch “I can’ t let you mount an Museums of Conscience, a “world-wide http://www.ddaymuseum.org can History and Culture, explained, “Muse- exhibit that does that.”5 network of organisations and individuals ums must not look to educate visitors to a dedicated to teaching and learning how 3 http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/ singular point of view. Rather the goal is to In Japan, too, most controversies about war historic sites and museums can inspire experience/index.html create an informed public.”4 memory focus on shaping the attitudes of social consciousness and action,” explic- This exhibit is now only on line. young people. Initially Second World War itly presents the subjects of state terrorism, This attitude is less prevalent in Japan, in museums were peripheral to this issue, human trafficking, and racism, among oth- 4 Lonny Bunch, Fighting the Good Fight, part because most peace museum staff because so many of them were originally ers, as equivalent across national bounda- Museum News, members are not professional museolo- conceived of as a religious memorial or to ries. This website links thirteen museums, (March-April 1995), 32-35, 58-62. gists, especially those at public museums. console survivors. Yet an increasingly large including the Terezin Memorial in the Rather, they are career civil servants, who share of Japanese history museum-goers Czech Republic, the District Six Museum 5 Tom Crouch interview with Laura Hein, just happened to be appointed to the cura- are school children. Echoing the anxie- in South Africa, and the Japanese American June 29, 2004. torial division of a peace museum as a part ties of their American counterparts, Japa- National Museum in Los Angeles. While of their regular rotation through local gov- nese critics of peace museums fear young each museum focuses on a specific history 6 http://www.sitesofconscience.org. ernment, doing such jobs as issuing vehi- Japanese will accept what they think of as of persecution, the international coalition In 1996, conservative groups began attack- cle licences and managing national health a “Tokyo Trials view of history”. In both effectively uses the global technology of ing Peace Osaka. While the museum had insurance. They knew little about operating cases, the critics argued that the state has the world wide web to pose the question of opened with wide support within Japan, a museum or the history of the war, making the right to present its own actions in the comparability of experience across national This is a much abridged version of the museum currently makes little effort to it difficult for them to defend their institu- best possible light to its own younger citi- borders.6 ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the mobilise this substantial political constitu- tions. While many Japanese museums zens, even by withholding information that United States since 1945’ , Laura Hein ency, and instead tries to avoid controver- provide personal testimony for visitors’ has been common knowledge for decades. Finally, to return to the history of the and Akiko Takenaka, Pacific Historical sies at any cost. For example, Peace Osaka perusal, they generally present personal More fundamentally, in both nations these atomic bomb, many Americans have never Review 76.1 (February 2007): 61-94. has prohibited their own oral history narra- narratives as illustrations of a typical expe- celebrants of state power deprive young been comfortable with the official narrative tors from talking about subjects other than rience rather than using a set of them to people of the opportunity to engage exhib- because it never fit well within a framework

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