Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.
Students learn about the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. Through an analysis of Dorothea Lange's photographs, the "Pledge of Allegiance," and a U.S. government flyer from 1942, students discuss the complexities of U.S. history and politics.
This course gives a historical perspective on financial panics. Topics include the growth of the industrial world, the Great Depression and surrounding events, and more recent topics such as the first oil crisis, Japanese stagnation, and conditions following the financial crisis of 2008.
Once the pride of the German Navy, this 700 foot long heavy cruiser was used by the U.S. as a test target for not one but two atom bombs at Bikini atoll. Today, at the bottom of the ocean, the radiation levels of the Prinz Eugen are low enough for safe exploration. In this video, Jonathan joins historian Mark Miller on a trip to explore this mysterious shipwreck. What they find about the condition of this wreck is surprising. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.
This writing assignment--the formal argument--requires students to use the comparison/contrast mode to support a stand on a controversial historial issue, along with material from sources chosen by their instructor.
“Friends Across The Wires” is an original, full-length play, written and directed by Laura Ferri and produced by Tamara Bunnell, exploring the impact of the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII through the lens of young people in Seattle. Based on first person accounts, interviews, and additional primary source research, the play offers an intimate exploration of friendship while examining historical patterns of racism. The project was originally intended to be a live, touring production, but Covid-19 rendered this impossible. The play was then filmed at the Erickson Theatre by Seattle Colleges Cable Television (SCCtv) and edited with sound design, photos and period music.
Friends Across The Wires is an original, full-length play, written and directed by Laura Ferri and produced by Tamara Bunnell, exploring the impact of the Japanese American Incarceration during WWII through the lens of young people in Seattle.
This is the teacher guide to accompany a viewing of Friends Across The Wires, an original play exploring the impact of the the Japanese-American Incarceration during WWII on a group of young people in Seattle. The guide offers background to the play as well as opportunities to engage with primary sources to learn about historical patterns of racism.Film, written and directed by Laura Ferri, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives license.Teacher guide, by Tamara Bunnell, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial license.
Three years before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt declared the South to be "the nation's number one economic problem." Georgia's economy was distinctly agricultural and low-wage, with little manufacturing compared with states in the North and Midwest. The median family income was nearly half of the national average. One year later, an influx of federal defense money established new industries, such as the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, and expanded existing ones, such as the J. A. Jones Construction Company in Brunswick. While 320,000 Georgians served in the United States Armed Forces, tens of thousands of Georgians repaired aircraft, built B-29 bombers, and worked in shipyards at home during the war. Meanwhile, military training was widespread throughout Georgia, occupying its fields as well as skies. Capitalizing on the state's flat coastal region and mild winters, Army airfields were installed in Savannah, Statesboro, Thomasville, and Waycross, and pilots trained in Albany, Augusta, Americus, and Douglas. Thousands of soldiers passed through Fort Benning and Fort Oglethorpe, where members of the Women's Army Corps trained for positions at home and abroad. World War II employment was crucial to the economic development of the state, ushering in the transformation to a modern, industrial, and diverse Georgia. This exhibition was created as part of the DPLA's Public Library Partnerships Project by collaborators from the Digital Library of Georgia and Georgia's public libraries. Exhibition organizers: Mandy Mastrovita and Greer Martin.
Tuning into the radio is now an integrated part of our everyday lives. We tune in while we drive, while we work, while we cook in our kitchens. Just 100 years ago, it was a novelty to turn on a radio. The radio emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, the result of decades of scientific experimentation with the theory that information could be transmitted over long distances. Radio as a medium reached its peakthe so-called Radio Golden Ageduring the Great Depression and World War II. This was a time when the world was rapidly changing, and for the first time Americans experienced those history-making events as they happened. The emergence and popularity of radio shifted not just the way Americans across the country experienced news and entertainment, but also the way they communicated. This exhibition explores the development, rise, and adaptation of the radio, and its impact on American culture.
Editorial Reviews The New York Times, September, 1957.
“...This is an old story, but it is told in a fresh and lovely voice. Robert Leckie writes with charm, with personal humility, with humor, with a rare gift for capturing all that is human in the most inhuman of man's activities. He makes no bones about it— the war is what happened to him. The point of view is not the grand strategy of victory, but the immediate tactic of personal survival. By turns a boot, a machine gunner on Guadalcanal, a liberty hound in Australia, an intelligence scout on Peleliu — briefly a self-styled "brig rat" subsisting on bread and water and finally a casualty —Private Leckie fought the enlisted man's battle.
By David Dempsey The Marine Corps Association and Foundation Revisiting a Pacific War Classic by Lt. Col. Michael Grice Robert
Leckie’s "Helmet for My Pillow" has been my single favorite military book for over 30 years. Written from the perspective of a young participant in the great endeavor that was World War II, it is a soulful, wrenching, humorous, and insightful account of one youth’s journey into manhood via the Pacific campaigns spearheaded by the 1st Marine Division. I first read it as a junior high school student in 1980, and I have reread it nearly every year since. It has framed my perspectives of the Marine Corps, of leadership, of enlisted service, of officers, and of combat as I have aged, matured, and risen through the ranks. Leckie doesn’t provide a technical, historical account consisting of units, maps, and strategy, but instead provides a humanistic view of the Marine Corps at war from the perspective of an often-bewildered observer caught up in the whirlwind of events. Beginning with his rush to service after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Leckie brings the reader along as a fellow traveler on his journey to war. He presents his story through a framework of symbolism, simile, and metaphor; almost no character is identified by actual name but instead by title or attribute that the author chooses to best typify them. Generally warm to his peers (to whom have been bestowed titles such as “Hoosier,” “Chuckler,” and “Runner,” all so called because of their origins, habits, or claims to fame), he is critical of his seniors, most notably his officers. “Commando,” for example, was what we would consider an exceptionally motivated officer in the modern sense, but his Marines viewed him with suspicion and occasional terror as he attempted to utilize urban combat techniques in the dank jungles of the Pacific. “Commando sits on his brains,” says Leckie and his mates; they recognize that he is incredibly brave, but such bravery is not the only quality that a leader needs to possess in order to inspire men.
He writes of officers who only venture into the lines when they hear that Leckie has somehow obtained a box of cigars; true to his status as a carefree private he ensures that they receive none. Leckie is not uncomplimentary to all of his leaders, however, as he admiringly terms one of his lieutenants “Spearmint” because he has the lowly affectation for chewing gum. Spearmint they follow out of respect and admiration; Commando they follow because they are Marines, and Marines follow orders. The juxtaposition of leadership types and styles from the perspective of an articulate young private is an object lesson that all Marine leaders should heed, and there is no finer case study than Helmet for My Pillow.
The book should not be read only for the study in leadership, but also from the perspective of a Marine engaged in a seemingly endless conflict. Leckie speaks of timeless war where rumors of returning home rise and fall with the completion of each assault. He chronicles the chaotic creation of a newly formed division as it prepares to fight; the murderous landings and campaigns in Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu; and the adventures and misadventures of liberty in Australia....
“‘I would have just lived’: Surviving Japanese internment during WWII” (Part 1) is the first of a two part series that features the oral history testimony of Mitsue Salador and was written, researched, and recorded by Tatiana Bryant, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. Listeners should note in advance that this audio Open Educational Resource includes themes of grief, xenophobia, racism, and war.
In the early 1940s, Japanese American teenager Mitsue Salador was directed to go to college for nursing because Japanese women weren’t hired as teachers at white schools. Dismayed, she entered college in Portland, OR to study nursing briefly, before she was forced into an urban detention center for people of Japanese heritage after Pearl Harbor. Mitsue organized a loophole escape from the detention center by applying to a college in the Midwest where she would be deemed as less of a potential threat away from active war theaters. Isolated from her family, she continued her education while her parents and youngest sibling survived an internment camp and older siblings navigated college and active military service. In Part 1, Mitsue Salador of Long Island, NY via Hood River, OR, talks about her lived experience as a college student and daughter of Japanese immigrants before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“‘I would have just lived’: Surviving Japanese internment during WWII (Part 2)” is the second of a two part series that features the oral history testimony of Mitsue Salador and was written, researched, and recorded by Tatiana Bryant, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. Listeners should note in advance that this audio Open Educational Resource includes themes of grief, xenophobia, racism, and war.
In the early 1940s, Japanese American teenager Mitsue Salador was directed to go to college for nursing because Japanese women weren’t hired as teachers at white schools. Dismayed, she entered college in Portland, OR to study nursing briefly, before she was forced into an urban detention center for people of Japanese heritage after Pearl Harbor. Mitsue organized a loophole escape from the detention center by applying to a college in the Midwest where she would be deemed as less of a potential threat away from active war theaters. Isolated from her family, she continued her education while her parents and youngest sibling survived an internment camp and older siblings navigated college and active military service.
In Part 2, Mitsue Salador of Long Island, NY via Hood River, OR, talks about her lived experience as a college student and daughter of Japanese immigrants forced to relocate to a detention center after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
As part of Washington's Kip Tokuda Memorial Civil Liberties Public Education Program, which strives to educate the public regarding the history and the lessons of the World War II exclusion, removal, and detention of persons of Japanese ancestry, KSPS Public Television and Eastern Washington educators Starla Fey, Leslie Heffernan, and Morgen Larsen have produced Injustice at Home: the Japanese American experience of the World War II Era.
This educational resource--five educational videos and an inquiry-based unit of study--will help students understand Executive Order 9066 and the resulting internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the failure of political leadership to protect constitutional rights, the military experience of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and examples of discrimination and racial prejudice the Japanese-American community faced before, during and after WWII.
In addition, students will analyze the short and long term emotional effects on those who are incarcerated, identify the challenges that people living outside of the exclusion zone faced, examine how some Japanese Americans showed their loyalty during the period of incarceration, and learn about brave individuals who stood up for Japanese Americans during this time.
With KSPS's Injustice at Home: Overcoming Discrimination and Adversity (a series of four educational videos and a curriculum unit), grade school students will learn the stories of Frank C. Hirahara, Kazuko Sakai Nakao, Kaz Yamamoto, and Fred Shiosaki through oral history interviews. As survivors of the Japanese Incarceration
Camps during WWII, the powerful stories of these survivors reveal the damaging nature of racial discrimination upon the Japanese American community.
Throughout the unit, Grades 4-6 students will witness the fortitude and courage of those who suffered racial discrimination but overcame it due to the resiliency of their culture and character. Students will analyze paintings and poetry made by incarcerated Japanese American youth to determine the diverse impact on their daily lives. Students will conclude the unit by creating a biographical presentation of one of the survivors and demonstrate what can be learned from those who have experienced and overcome
discrimination.
A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring Japanese Internment during World War II. This set also includes a Teacher's Guide with historical context and teaching suggestions.
In this lesson, students will experience the internment of Japanese Americans from San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood. By connecting local experiences with national events, students will understand both the constitutional issues at stake and the human impact of this government policy.
This collection uses primary sources to explore Japanese American internment during World War II. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
After the attack at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps for the duration of World War II. This dark period was largely ignored until many years later.
After the attack at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps for the duration of World War II. This dark period was largely ignored until many years later.