UPDATE : Atomic Bombing Exhibit Has Veterans Up in Arms : Some say Smithsonian display will ignore Japanese atrocities.

WASHINGTON —  During perhaps the most critical moment of the 20th Century, Maj. Thomas W. Ferebee peered down from the Enola Gay bomber at a T-shaped bridge. Two minutes later, he had changed the world forever.

A 9,000-pound atomic bomb called “Little Boy” fell out of the sky at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, and leveled the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of lives were simultaneously saved and lost with the flip of a switch, and the mushroom cloud that hovered over Hiroshima became the first lasting image of the Atomic Age.

The days and years that followed produced other images, both proud and fearful--a sailor bending his sweetheart in a homecoming kiss, diplomats walking the thin line between deterrence and destruction, missile-carrying ships crawling first toward Cuba, then away.

Today, World War II veterans and historians are engaging in a tug-of-war over the meaning of those photographic images and hence, over the fabric of history.

As the Smithsonian Institution prepares to pull the Enola Gay, the legendary Air Force B-29 Superfortress that delivered Little Boy, from its resting place for an exhibit commemorating the first atomic bombing, decades-old tensions over the attack are festering again.

Aviators and combat veterans say the planned exhibit, titled “The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” will present an unfair and incomplete picture of the war by highlighting the devastation caused by the bomb without also portraying atrocities by the Japanese military. Early blueprints for the display included far more photos of Japanese victims than U.S. casualties.

Veterans say making the Enola Gay, which has been sitting in a dusty Maryland hangar for nearly 50 years, part of such a display would dishonor the warplane.

Historians at the National Air and Space Museum have insisted that their display, which has been re-scripted to pacify critics repeatedly since March, will be unbiased.

Museum Director John Harwit has said the exhibit will present the “naked brutality” of the Japanese forces, which tortured POWs and performed biological experiments on innocent victims.

For months, Air Force officials, members of Congress and veterans have been negotiating with the exhibit’s designers to find some middle ground.

“Now, the heels are dug in,” said Jack Giese, a spokesman for the Air Force Assn., a group made up of veterans, active military members and civilian supporters.

Efforts to find a balance in the exhibit have deteriorated into an acerbic feud that threatens to produce a result that satisfies no one. The 5,500-square-foot display, set to open next May, even has spurred infighting among museum staff.

Under the current layout, the exhibit will consist of five areas, each with artifacts on display and captions explaining their significance. The first area, called “A Fight to the Finish,” will focus on combat in the Pacific. It features an Ohka Japanese suicide bomber used against U.S. ships.

The second area recounts how President Harry S. Truman arrived at his decision to drop the bomb and includes a replica of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb that razed the Japanese city of Nagasaki eight days after the first bomb.

The forward 60 feet of the Enola Gay’s bullet-shaped fuselage will be the centerpiece of the third section, “Delivering the Bomb.”

The fourth area, “Ground Zero,” is the “emotional center” of the exhibit, administrators say. It will include photos of the decimation inflicted on the two Japanese targets, the charred remnants of a schoolgirl’s meal, a clock forever frozen at 8:15 a.m.

“We certainly aren’t trying to shock people, but we’re going to accurately show the destruction on the ground,” said Mike Fetters, museum spokesman.

The last area, “The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” will revisit the immediate post-World War II period, the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.

Veterans say the display, particularly the post-war section, is geared toward politically correct revisionism.

The exhibit largely ignores the significance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march, they say--and by devoting too much space to issues such as nuclear proliferation and brinkmanship by the superpowers, the museum seems to apologize for U.S. use of the bomb.

The Air Force Assn. and other groups have demanded the designers re-script the display.

Two dozen members of Congress, distressed by a “lack of context” in the display, said in an August letter to Robert M. Adams, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, that the exhibit blueprint is “anti-American” because it includes more photographs of Japanese casualties than American casualties.

And on Friday, the Senate unanimously passed a non-binding resolution urging the Smithsonian not to discount the sacrifice of American veterans in its exhibit of the Enola Gay.

To appease critics, exhibit designers have added an anteroom to the main gallery with more background information on how the war began. To get to the main exhibit, visitors would pass through the anteroom, featuring about 50 photographs and focused on the ways that Americans experienced the Pacific War, both on the battlefield and at home.