The A-Bomb Controversy at the National Air and Space Museum

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1947, Linenthal earned his bachelor's degree in religious studies at Western Michigan University, his master's degree in divinity at the Pacific School of Religion, and his Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is Professor of Religion and American Culture at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His books include: Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative (1989); Sacred Ground: Americans and their Battlefields (2nd edition, 1993); Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (1995); American Sacred Space (co-editor, 1995). He is writing a history of the A-Bomb controversy that will appear in a book to be published in 1996. Linenthal has often lectured about controversial historic sites for National Park Service staff. At the USS Arizona Memorial, Linenthal delivered a commemorative address on 7 December 1994, on the 53rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Linenthal and his wife, with their two sons, reside in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Linenthal was the only historian to testify before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration about the National Air and Space Museum's ill-fated exhibit, “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II.” What follows is Linenthal's Senate statement and comments he has written for The Historian.