History at Home
History at Home: Domestic Policies of World War II Museums
Politics dictate almost every facet of our world today. Public institutions carry hidden agendas that most are not aware of. Major organizations are helped or hindered by the nomination of politicians; educational policies are altered with one signature from an appointed hand; even sports teams debate contracts diplomatically. Museums are no different. Political parties and other organizations determine what should be imposed upon museum visitors based on what they believe should be remembered, and this coercion transcends national borders. Internal political voices encourage exhibit construction to reflect current goals of society, whereas external politicians use museums as tools to advance policies in other facets of life.[1] The Audit Commission Key Lines of Enquiry (guidelines for cultural services administered at the state level) reflect external aims of “meeting local, regional and national objectives in terms of ‘healthier communities,’ ‘safer and stronger communities,’ ‘economic vitality,’ ‘learning’ and ‘quality of life for local people’” within museums, assuming that these institutions contribute to social, economic and educational scholarship.[2] Hence governments ignore concerns of museum staff and focus on their own agendas. According to historian Clive Gray, museums are linked to political organizations for economic reasons, which explains the instrumentalism of museum practice to live up to demands of state actors. Politicians at the local and national level determine funding for state institutions, limiting museum professionals’ ability to sustain their establishments.[3]
Content exhibited in museums can be structured based off of what politicians declare worth remembering. The Second World War is a case in point. World War II museums exhibit controversial topics in the United States, Poland and Japan that have registered more political influences than any other institutions elsewhere in the world. American museums, such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and National Air and Space Museum, attribute their exhibits to pressure from veterans groups and military associations who want to present America in a positive light and uphold patriotic values while memorializing men who fought. Poland’s museums stray from narrating major events of the war and are beginning to include exhibits celebrating Polish-Jews, claiming that stories about oppressed people need to be told. Other museums, such as the Auschwitz State Museum, is at the mercy of the Polish state who dictates its existence on whether or not the museum is contributing to the area’s economic growth. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries has witnessed Japan’s remembrance of defeat and its people’s willingness to reconcile with the past and honor those who died fighting for their own causes in their museums. Visitors in all three countries examine the results of political agendas within museums; they interpret only what governments and organizations wish them to interpret based on what other generations remember. Curators, other museum professionals, and the general public are not given as much free reign in designing exhibits as previously thought, at least in dealing with a global war.
Conservative politics and social reforms have controlled American museums and other cultural venues since before Mount Vernon was established as a house museum. In the early republic, officials influenced policies of America’s heritage, claiming to exalt white male politicians by preserving the founders’ places of birth.[4] This pattern of male dominance has continued for decades, though female voices have joined in advocating to uphold the view of America as a powerful nation while staying in touch with patriotic values. Political pressures demand that museums achieve this by separating narratives that challenge these notions, thus individual celebrations permeate many museums in the United States. Memories of personal contributions to the war through interviews and images allow visitors to understand World War II looking inward. The National Museum of American History’s 1995 World War II: Sharing Memories exhibit ranks telling individual stories as the foothold of their museum professionals’ agendas as it displays men and women on the home front. Foot soldiers and their possessions, such as gum, candy bars and pictures of family and friends, personalizes the message by connecting our own valuables with what was valued by the men during the war. Women are remembered as those who worked in the public sphere in the absence of men, and also as those who contributed to the war effort by planting vegetable gardens. Exhibitions with these subject matters lack overarching accounts of national policy because officials in high offices seek to restrain facilitating controversies of the war in public buildings, as well as scholarship of individual concerns of soldiers because these were limited to their personal and local connections.[5]
America may have never dealt with more political controversy then when the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) tried to display the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in January of 1995. The B-29 Superfortress was a propeller-driven bomber that housed its crew in pressurized compartments. It was originally designed to fly in the European theater and its crew dropped conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, nuclear weapons and mines in the Pacific.[6] Historians Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt claim that dropping the bomb signified “the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War and the dawn of a nuclear age.”[7] Topics such as these have drawn heat from historians as to their truth, but we cannot deny the impact the atomic bomb had on the world, particularly Americans, whose mixed reactions caught the ears of museum professionals specializing in World War II. NASM surrendered to political viewpoints instead of coordinating its own affairs.
Created with government funds to promise that the Enola Gay exhibit would represent “good, old-fashioned celebration of American achievement…enshrinement, pure and simple,” NASM forced its director out in the mid-1980s because the exhibits were beginning to extract criticism from other historians.[8] The displays were not modernized and did not represent current scholarship at the time. Martin Harwit became NASM’s director in 1987 and encompassed these aspects into his agenda, and in doing so, deepened “the intellectual structure of the space.”[9] Harwit’s philosophy was to incorporate exhibits that broke the status quo by exploring social implications of aviation experiences. Prior to the Enola Gay exhibit, the plane had already raised questions about decisions to drop the bomb and how to justify the mass death of American enemies. Retired admiral and former commander of the United States armed forces in the Pacific, Noel Gaylor, argued against celebrating innocent civilian deaths.[10] Nevertheless, planning committees met in 1993 to determine the exhibit’s primary goals, which were to analyze decisions to drop the bomb in 1945, ask whether it was necessary, and its meaning.[11]
Separate from the United States Air Force, the Air Force Association publically attacked the exhibit, saying its message raised doubts about ethics and morality of the way the United States chose to fight Japan as well as not properly honoring those who fought. The associate published an assault on the exhibit and NASM’s staff in its Air Force Magazine which brought more attention from the nation.[12] Veterans’ groups, speeches from politicians, both liberal and conservative, and the press, began a wave of criticism in hopes of closing down the exhibit, seeking to stop displaying “…a woeful catalog of crimes and aggressions against the helpless peoples of the earth.”[13] The U.S. Senate demanded the exhibit to display history in proper context that reflects a positivist view of veterans of the Pacific War. After November 1944, when Republicans were once again the majority in congress, cancelling the Enola Gay became the war cry of the right wing that ultimately ceased voices of the cultural left.[14] Thus congressional appropriations and private contributions dropped, members of congress wanted to fire Harwit and move the exhibit to another museum.[15] Harwit argued against cancelling the exhibit, stating that in doing so educational opportunities would be lost and the Smithsonian would be seen as weak because it buckled to political pressure.[16] Ultimately, the Enola Gay exhibit was cancelled, and the fuselage now rests in the National Air and Space Museum.
Museums in Poland have attracted attention from political groups who wish to create a buffer between military affairs and resulting bloodshed and settle upon exhibiting the persecution of their people. Poland’s Muzeum Katyńskie deemphasizes the importance of events and tacks names and coinciding portraits of victims of Katyń, who were prisoners of war incarcerated among three camps, as real people who led normal lives. The museum’s mission “is to preserve the national cultural relics collected, connected with the history of the Polish army, their proper maintenance and providing for scientific, teaching and education, so as to serve the learning and dissemination of knowledge about the Polish military history.” Multi-media displays and pictures of Katyń victims are accessible to become familiar with their lives before they were captured.[17]Visitors are left with a greater appreciation for the detrimental actions against Polish citizens, which is the core message of the exhibit.
Additionally, work is underway in Warsaw, Poland to establish the Historii ?ydó Polskich, or the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in which, according to author Annette Day, will exhibit Polish Jews as a way to showcase the way of life for an oppressed people. Poland’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, claims that the museum would be “dedicated to reinstating memory about the life, the multifaceted achievements and the creative endeavours of Polish Jews,” as well as “state the honest truth about the composite nature of Polish-Jewish relatics; to show all of their light and dark sides.”[18] Until the last fifteen years, Polish Jews have been underrepresented in educational institutions; therefore, museum professionals only exhibited what the non-Jewish population of Poland remembered and what they deemed appropriate to remember. It is clear that illumination of entire cultures and other facets of World War II reside in Museums worldwide. [19]
Poland’s Auschwitz State Museum exhibits Polish national martyrdom and Jewish suffering and death ─ though Jews are not seen as the overwhelming majority of victims ─ but were neglected when the museum was founded in 1947, and is firmly controlled by the Polish state to serve its own political goals.[20]Auschwitz was established in 1940 to act as a death and slave labor camp after Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939, whose ideology was to inflict terror to subjugate the Polish population. German troops left the area virtually intact, and following the liberation of Auschwitz and its town of O?wi?cim on January 27, 1945, groups of Polish political prisoners sought to preserve the memory of the concentration camp and its history, but numerous state institutions and political organization competed to control the camp simultaneously.[21]
As O?wi?cim grew, questions arose about the museum’s continued presence and if preserving its memory was worth the effort, as well as its part in preventing economic hardship of the region. Throughout Joseph Stalin’s reign, state and party officials demanded the museum close because the land it was built on could be used by the state to advance economic development and even convert brick-built prisoner barracks into civilian housing. According to author Alison Stenning, “In all these ways, the Polish state made it clear that restarting the economy, re-housing thousands of displaced people looking towards the future were higher priorities than a faithful representation of the camp.”[22]
Cries for the museum’s closure went unheeded, and during the 1950s, saw political ownership change from local government rule to a centralized state government rule in the form of the Ministry of Culture─ a leg of the Warsaw government.[23] Under new direction, O?wi?cim benefited from museum-related investment; railway production increased which paved the way for the arrival of more passengers and cargo trains. Higher populations caused concern about appropriate visitor behavior and whether facilities around the museum could be expropriated for other means. By the 1980s, urban political battles took center stage. Continued disputes about land usage came to a climax, Catholics advocated for the museum to represent Polish Catholic victims of Auschwitz because the communist state never allowed a broader memorialization of Catholics, and Jewish groups wanted the facilities shut down permanently. The Auschwitz State Museum’s staff chose to adhere to the framework the state set for them in 1957, thus alienating itself from civilization.[24]
The end of communism brought a breath of life to the museum. Its new role was to act as an “increasing global institution” and compete to enhance its reputation, increase funding, and gain higher percentages of visitation against other Holocaust museums. An International Advisory Council, established by the Minister of Culture, had curators design narratives that represented its site history, though Polish political figures working in conjunction with museum staff which ultimately made the museum mirror national and internationalist interests. When the Governmental Strategic Program for O?wi?cim took control of operations in 1996, visitor satisfaction and changing aesthetics of exhibits were priorities if the museum was going to attract tourists, something the site is still vying for today.[25] The collections include items from camp prisoners, personal possessions brought with deportees, items related to the extermination process, and SS garrison paraphernalia. Thousands of shoes, suitcases, kitchen utensils, works of art and hundreds of prostheses and orthoses and camp garments were found after liberation and currently on permanent display. Traveling and temporary exhibits are available for people to learn more about Auschwitz and general facts about Poland’s history.[26]
Japanese governments at the national level want to impose that their museums focus less on individualism and more on destructiveness of war and have sought to console elderly survivors and honor those who passed away. Peace museums achieve these objectives. The Osaka International Peace Center, or Peace Osaka, in Osaka, Castle Park was used as a munitions factory during World War II and now educates visitors on Japan’s role in the Asia-Pacific War. The center features materials related to war experiences, a library open to visitors to research and interactive videos and picture-card shows on peace education.[27] After heeding local citizens’ groups and media’s wishes to remember the impact the war had on Osaka, the curators agreed to analyze policies of the United States and Japanese governments to explain the fate of Osaka after fifty American air raid attacks laid waste to the city. Research from Hein and Takenaka suggest Japan understands its role in the war and does not place blame on other countries. They see themselves as victims and as aggressors.[28]
Conversations about how to memorialize key events of the war years permeates Japan’s Sh?wa Hall. Finished in 1990 to honor the Sh?wa Emperor who died a year earlier and was protected by American officials from denunciation as a war criminal, the Hall acts as a peace museum that encompasses general effects and events of World War II. Following the death of the emperor, negotiations began as to if the same artifacts and messages that older generations understood should be kept to expose younger generations to. Japan’s emperor never addressed who was responsible for the war as well as whose job it was to make that decision. Thus the burden fell on representatives of Japan’s major daily newspapers, academics, corporate and non-profit sector executives, graphic designers and committees, including Nihon Izokukai, or the Association of Bereaved Families, whose goal was to construct the Hall through government funding to honor Japanese citizens who were victims of the war. Nihon Izokukai’s president, Suehiro Sakae, claimed Sh?wa Hall’s function would be “to provide some vindication to those children who want to know that their father’s blood was not spilled in vain. We should show the role the Japanese military played in a broader historical sense, and provide a correct history.”[29] He also claimed that Japan was coerced to fight to save Asia’s economic infrastructure.[30] To be sure, powerful officials influenced Sh?wa Hall’s memorialization, but the general public’s opinions were excluded.
Criticisms shed light on the Hall’s narrow and one-sided war experience perspectives, the diminishing of Japan’s relations with South Korea and China, and its neglect of reflections of the past. Japan’s lack of diplomatic conversations has damaged its security and trade delegations with South Korea and China because of Japan’s unwillingness to answer questions about pacifism, or lack thereof. [31] Exhibits discussing Japan’s responsibility toward nations ravaged by war is absent, and its relationship with the people of its former colonies are remembered as those who were laborers, students, or conscripted workers.[32] Choosing non-controversial blueprints for Sh?wa Hall limits its legitimacy in the eyes of Japan’s citizens and other nations and reflects the political agendas of the emperor and his followers.[33]
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party argued for the Hall to reflect an ideology of victimhood. Before the turn of the twenty-first century, ideas about citizenship and trauma of war victims, other losses, and defeat, in postwar Japan defined “victim consciousness” in which there was a separation of “the people” and the military. Democrats blamed Japan’s military for high casualty rates, advocating against war-action narratives.[34]
Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine and Museum exhibits personal sacrifices and honors the Sh?wa emperor. It embraces imperial missions during the war and lionizes the “kamikaze” pilots who sacrificed themselves for their nation. In addition, Yasukuni is a “manifestation of a global phenomenon of state-sponsored war nationalism pivoting on the war dead” by neglecting the discuss war crimes, women, families and home destroyed and instead legitimizes Japan’s role in the Pacific War.[35] The Association for Bereaved Families lobbied for the completion of Yasukuni and continues to support families and deceased soldiers today.[36]
Politics play a major role in deciding what material countries display in museums, which lessens museum professionals’ influence. American, Polish and Japanese museums exhibit controversial messages about World War II through artifacts, multi-media designs and photographs. Veterans’ groups and other officials dictated what the Enola Gay exhibit would say about American values, such as patriotism, as well as by pleading positivist views of the war. Poland’s Auschwitz State Museum was strictly controlled by the state and was never assured existence due to the fact that its town was trying to build its infrastructure of which politicians were not sure the museum was contributing to that effort. Sh?wa Hall in Japan operates as a peace museum that reflects political agendas that care more about reconciliation than war atrocities and responsibilities for the war, which has damaged relationships with neighboring countries. Domestic policies will continue to define public memory unless museum professionals’ strike an accord with politicians and influential groups as to who should ultimately be responsible for displaying histories of nations.
Bibliography
“Boing B-29 Superfortress ‘Enola Gay.” Airandspace.si.edu. Accessed December 11, 2015. https://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19500100000.
Day, Annette. “Displaying the Twentieth Century in Polish Museums.” Oral History 32, no. 1 (2004): 87-96.
Gray, Clive. “Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management.” Public Policy and & Administration 26, no. 1 (2011): 1-17.
Hein, Laura and Takenaka, Akiko. “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States Since 1995.” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 1 (2007): 61-94.
“Historical Collection.” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Accessed December 11, 2015. https://auschwitz.org/en/museum/historical-collection/.
Linenthal, Edward and Engelhardt, Tom. “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past.” New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC. 1996.
“Memory is not given to destroy….” Muzeum Katyńskie. Accessed December 11, 2015. https://www.muzeumkatynskie.pl/pl/12249/pamiec_nie_dala_sie_zgladzic.html.
“Osaka International Peace Center (Peace Osaka).” OsakaInfo. Accessed December 12, 2015. https://www.osaka-info.jp/en/facilities/cat1/post_146.html.
Selden, Mark. “Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism.” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 45 (2008): 71-77.
Smith, Kerry. “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home.” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002): 35-64.
Stenning, Alison et al. “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz.” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008): 401-413.
West, Patricia. “Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums.” Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1999.
Zimmerman, Joshua D. Review of Auschwitz, Poland and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945- 1979. By Huener, Jonathan. Slavic Review. 2005.
Notes
[1] Clive Gray, “Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management,” Public Policy and & Administration 26, no. 1 (2011): 3.
[2] Clive Gray, “Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management,” Public Policy and & Administration 26, no. 1 (2011): 5.
[3]Clive Gray, “Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management,” Public Policy and & Administration 26, no. 1 (2011): 8-9.
[4] Patricia West, “Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums,” (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 2-3.
[5]Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States Since 1995,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 1 (2007): 61-94.
[6] “Boing B-29 Superfortress ‘Enola Gay,” Airandspace.si.edu, accessed December 11, 2015, https://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19500100000.
[7] Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past,” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 140.
[8] Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 142.
[9]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 143.
[10] Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 145.
[11]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 146.
[12]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 156.
[13]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 160.
[14]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 161.
[15]Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 162.
[16] Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, “History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC., 1996), 164.
[17] “Memory is not given to destroy…,” Muzeum Katyńskie, accessed December 11, 2015, https://www.muzeumkatynskie.pl/pl/12249/pamiec_nie_dala_sie_zgladzic.html.
[18]Annette Day, “Displaying the Twentieth Century in Polish Museums,” Oral History 32, no. 1 (2004): 87-96.
[19]Annette Day, “Displaying the Twentieth Century in Polish Museums,” Oral History 32, no. 1 (2004): 87-96.
[20] Joshua D. Zimmerman, review of Auschwitz, Poland and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979, by Jonathan Huener, Slavic Review, 2005.
[21] Alison Stenning, et al, “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz,” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008):404.
[22]Alison Stenning, et al, “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz,” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008):405.
[23]Alison Stenning, et al, “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz,” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008):406.
[24]Alison Stenning, et al, “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz,” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008):409.
[25]Alison Stenning, et al, “A Tale of Two Institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz,” Geoforum 39, no. 1 (2008):411.
[26]“Historical Collection,” Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, accessed December 11, 2015, https://auschwitz.org/en/museum/historical-collection/.
[27]“Osaka International Peace Center (Peace Osaka),” OsakaInfo, accessed December 12, 2015, https://www.osaka-info.jp/en/facilities/cat1/post_146.html.
[28]Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States Since 1995,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 1 (2007): 61-94.
[29] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002):43.
[30] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002):43.
[31] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002):41.
[32] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002):55.
[33] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002):59.
[34] Kerry Smith, “The Sh?wa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home,” The Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002): 59.
[35] Mark Selden, “Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 45 (2008): 72.
[36]Mark Selden, “Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 45 (2008): 74.