World War II welder and wife of a veteran Margaret Spalluzzi talks about working as a welder during the war, life as a civilian during the war, and communicating with her husband overseas.
The audio portion of this oral history is available independently as a MP3 file.
World War II veteran Theodore Akimoto shares his personal memories of the war.
The audio from this clip is available independently as a MP3 file.
World War II veteran Susumu Ito talks about his memories of serving in the all-Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team during the war and the internment of his parents in an American internment camp. The presentation includes film footage, images, and subtitles.
World War II veteran Mary Ginnerty shares her personal memories of the war.
The audio of this oral history is available independently as a MP3 file.
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), the prolific and talented children's book author, was also a political cartoonist. From 1941 to 1943, Seuss drew over 400 editorial cartoons as the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM. All 400 of his cartoons have been scanned onto this website by the staff of the Mandeville Special Collection Library at the University of California, San Diego, which houses the original cartoons in the Dr. Seuss Collection.
The cartoons are primarily related to issues surrounding World War II; and include caricature images of political figures like Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. There are also a series of 10 War bond cartoons that Seuss drew for PM.
The site has a brief (500-word) introduction that gives an overview of Seuss's life and career. Currently the images are accessible by the month and year of publication or by subject. The site is somewhat difficult to use because of the lack of keyword search, but it is still a rich resource for information on popular culture, politics, and the media during World War II.
Professors Lawrence J. Vale, Thomas Kochan, and J. Phillip Thompson discuss issues related to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the recovery of New Orleans. Vale looks at past urban disasters and how these cities have changed and recovered; Kochan contrasts Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to Pearl Harbor with Bush's to Katrina; and Thompson looks at racial tension in New Orleans, prior to and after the hurricane.
I teach in the inner city. What's a good opening lesson for teaching World War II?
Any day 1 lesson—regardless of the topic—should align with and introduce goals, objectives, and essential questions for a larger unit of study. Using a backwards design approach to developing curriculum, creating individual lesson plans comes after you have determined what you want students to know and be able to do throughout the unit. A good day 1, therefore, necessitates a significant amount of planning beyond the opening activities. Some sample objectives and questions for a unit of study on World War II might include: Why, after the costs of World War I, did nations choose to fight another World War? Why were the civilian costs of World War II so much higher than World War I? Why were the allies victorious?
In addition to introducing the unit, you might consider using part of the first day to investigate what your students already understand—or misunderstand—about the war, introduce key vocabulary for the unit, or preview a timeline of events that you will be studying.
You could also focus an opening lesson on investigating the origins of the war. Activities for this approach might include a multi-media slide lecture on the long and short term causes of the war, an examination of primary documents such as the Treaty of Versailles, excerpts from newspaper reports on German, Italian, and Japanese aggression, or parts of important speeches made by world leaders in the years prior to the war.
Another approach is to begin by considering the significance of the war. To do so, you could examine some statistics that indicate the enormous human cost of the war, or introduce ways that the war fundamentally changed the United States and the world. On a smaller scale, ask students what their family history is with the war and whether the war holds any significance for their family’s story.
There is no shortage of lesson plans and curriculum materials for World War II online. PBS, for example, includes several lessons to accompany Ken Burns' critically acclaimed documentary, The War. The California Department of Education's Course Models contain background information and activities for each of the state's standards, including materials on the war. And, National Geographic’s Xpedition archive includes several lessons on the war. The quality of lesson plans posted online, however, varies wildly. Consider using our rubric for evaluating lesson plans to help you make your choice.
Explore these resources for inspiration, then make some choices. Good luck!
I'm looking for military history resources for elementary school children. In particular:
Finding resources for educating elementary school students about military history can be a challenge. But they’re out there.
One good place to start is with Eyewitness Books. Covering conflicts like the American Revolution and World War II, these books are packed with pictures; and targeted at students ages 9-12.
Another approach to finding books is through grade-appropriate reading lists. The School of Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky, for instance, has a great reading list for children PreK-Grade 6. Scroll down to "historical fiction" in the list and look for what might be relevant to your interests there.
Libraries are another obvious choice for booklists. One great source is the Springfield, MA American Historical Fiction Reading List. Presenting books appropriate for students in grades 4, 5, and 6, the list includes books on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam. Although targeted at older elementary students, the Young Adult Library Services Association’s History booklist has some good resources and includes a number of books dealing with military history. Library Booklists—a clearinghouse of public libraries across the nation—is another good source for book lists compiled by librarians. Their Young Adult Historical Fiction page has a number of different lists on it, addressing different historical topics and themes.
Another approach you can take is to check out social studies reading lists with works for students of all ages, which will include some elementary-level works dealing with military history. One great list is the recommended books archive for social studies on the PBS Teachers website. Bear in mind, though, that these books are for all readers, not just elementary students.
Finally, there are other websites available online that compile booklists by topic and by grade-level. One relatively comprehensive example is the "Children’s Books about War" page on the Family Education website. The forty books on the list range by grade level, but all focus in some way on military conflict and war.
In terms of a timeline, one of the more comprehensive military timelines on the web is the Military History Timeline available on warscholar.com. Though perhaps too complex for younger elementary students, it's a great resource for students headed into middle school.
As for field trips for students interested in war and military history, there is a wide range of museums and historic sites. A wide range of museums exists, from the American Civil War Museum in Gettysburg, PA, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, to the Korean War National Museum in Springfield, IL, dealing with specific wars, and those museums frequently have educational outreach programs.
Other, state-specific museums, like the Virginia War Museum, or the Texas Civil War Museum, look more closely at military history within particular states. Another great resource is the National Park Service, which maintains both Revolutionary War Sites and Civil War Sites—sites that students can visit in a number of different states and that frequently offer educational outreach.
Of course, one of the easiest ways to find potential field trip locations is by using the Museums and Historic Sites search engine on the National History Education Clearinghouse website.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 9, 1945, the second atomic bomb struck Nagasaki. This age of nuclear warfare began less than a month after the first test of the atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert, and Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, later recalled, "There floated through my mind a line from the Bhagavad-Gita in which Krishna is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty: 'I am become death: the destroyer of worlds.'"
The decision to use atomic bombs against Japan is considered among the most controversial decisions in military history. Multifaceted arguments examining the causes and effects of that decision began before the bombs fell, continued in the immediate aftermath, and have not yet ended, and we probe them from the perspectives of military, political, social, and cultural history. Was the bombing justified? Did it hasten the end of the war?
Primary and secondary educational resources support an emphasis on multiple perspectives and historical thinking in approaching units about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The following suggestions are directed toward high-school and some middle-school classrooms.
Hot Topics: Hiroshima on the History News Network gives educators an overview of historiography and arguments behind the bombing. Among them, Peter Kuznick, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, addresses past and present perspectives in The Decision to Risk the Future . . . Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative. Sean Malloy, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Merced, Four Days in May . . . Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb follows the political rationale and chronology leading to Hiroshima.
For students, Steven Mintz's Digital History essay, The Controversy Continues in the unit America at War: World War II, brings the discussion into the present day using argument about the presentation of an Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian as a starting point to examine different points of view about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Help students become familiar with the arguments and look for their own conclusions through materials digitized at the Truman Library. A special collection focuses on The Decision to Drop the Bomb and includes documents totaling almost 600 pages covering the years 1945-1964. Secondary source materials include an online version of Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History, edited by Robert Ferrill. Among the primary source documents, the press release by Henry Stimson of August 6, 1945 includes an accompanying Lesson Plan for exploring the text and implications of that release.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute teachers' module on World War II incorporates a lesson plan on the Manhattan Project and a link to Was it Necessary?, a site highlighting this question and related primary documents exploring it.
The New York Times provides a lesson plan on He's the Bomb! with a look at Hiroshima 60 years later.
Edsitement Lesson Plans for grades 9-12 offer a balanced perspective on the decision to drop the bomb, linking to resources on the debates over the decision to bomb, Japan's decision to surrender, and arguments about the effect of the bombing on Japan's decision. Edsitement suggests assessment standards for its lessons and related resources for extending the lessons.
YouTube offers various historical footage of the bombing as well, but teachers will want to carefully screen videos and download them to a flash drive for accuracy and for age-appropriate coverage. And at the Library of Congress, a selected search of cultural collections and the Prints and Photographs online catalog also yields a multitude of photographs of the aftermath of the bombing and of further text-based resources.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a multifaceted look at the bombing and destructive effects on individuals and on the world. The museum presents a message of peace through a look at the horrors of war through survivor histories and exhibits on Hiroshima City and Japan before and after the atomic bombing. The museum directs many online materials toward elementary school ages, and is also well worth a visit from all ages for a conversation about how we remember, interpret, and use our historical past.
As Ronald Takaki writes in The Lessons of Hiroshima, "The history of this world-shattering event offers us lessons on war, race, leadership, reason, judgment, and the importance of cross-cultural understanding. Those who do not know history, a philosopher warned, will be doomed to repeat it. Hiroshima is a past that is not even past, and we ignore it at our peril."
Note: Unpublished because annotation does not seem to match website. Larger parent website also already covered at http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews/23319.
This exhibit by an art student begins with 11 color postcard-like recreations of original black-and-white photographs documenting life in the Poston (AZ) War Relocation Center, where more than 17,000 Japanese-Americans were interned between 1942 and 1945 by the U.S. military. An accompanying essay provides background information and a brochure describes the Poston Monument. In addition, viewers can access six pages from "an Internment Camp's High School Yearbook," and additional legal documents, memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, a timeline, and book excerpts through links to 26 related documents and 40 websites. An important site on the internment experience.