Greg,
Where I have removed bunkers, I have the same experience, even where I have designed them. In fact, removing bunkers and not really seeing an effect on the hole sort of opened my eyes to reducing bunker sizes overall.
In general, I think modern architects have made bunkers too big, including me. At a recent bunker renovation we took the furthest lobe from the green out in many cases and it made no difference. In fact, as a general rule I now measure the width of the green and make sure any green side bunker is less than that width to keep them more in scale and make the green more visually dominant. There are exceptions, but not many.
I do lament a few removals. On one course they removed some green backing bunkers, which to my eye made the hole. The (valid) argument is that on this uphill par 3, no one hit far enough to get in them. Still....on another hole they removed the long fairway bunker, leaving just the last little oval, arguing that this was the only part of the bunker that really challenged the carry. I believed the first fifty yards challenged the golfers sense of fear, though!
On a different bunker removal/reduction project, I had placed a few big bunkers. All go reduced in size. They had noted that the parts furthest from the fairway/green had very little use, so why put them there? (Actually, it was to sell houses, so now that houses were built, they had ceased to function, although they didn't ask the homeowners what they thought)
I have told the story about removing bunkers early in my career, which I hated, especially those 20-30 yards short of the green, which I think frame many greens quite well. But, they didn't come into play for good players anymore, so the prevailing thought of the time was to take them out. This era is similar to the 1930's and 1970's in that regard.
One more story, but about 1980 was doing a two hole remodel for an owner. On the first, he saw my fairway bunker left and told me to remove it because no one hit it left. I was feeling pretty good about the next hole, with its fairway bunker on the right, but he said to remove that one, too, because everyone hit there!
So, again, there is the case for no fairway bunkers......
BTW, agree with Joe. The bunkers most likely to stay serve multiple purposes. One always has to be that they are in play, but should also look good, divide holes, provide targets or safety, etc., if they want to be assured of staying.