Veterans Day | Teachinghistory.org

Friendly Fire

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Question

My cousin sent me this, is it accurate?

"The first German serviceman killed in WW II was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940); the highest ranking American killed was Lt Gen Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps. So much for allies."

Answer

This question is a little more complicated than it appears on the surface. For instance, Germany and Japan were not formally allied in 1937 (the Tripartite Pact allying Germany, Japan, and Italy went into effect in September 1940), and the 1937 action in China predated by two years Germany’s 1939 entry into World War II.

Likewise, historians usually consider the Winter War fought between Russia and Finland from 1939 to 1940 separate from the Second World War; in any case, it occurred well before the United States and Russia were allied, which did not occur until December 1941. (At the time of the Winter War, Russia and Germany had signed a non-aggression treaty and would remain in a state of uneasy neutrality until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941).

Lieutenant General Lesley McNair was indeed killed by United States Army Air Force bombs in July 1945 as part of Operation Cobra, the breakout from the Normandy beachheads following the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion. Along with Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner (killed by Japanese fire on Okinawa in 1945), General McNair was the highest-ranking American officer killed during the war.

In a larger sense, the question speaks to the confusion and chaos that forms an inevitable part of battle, and to the mistakes that confusion creates. Fratricide (the accidental targeting of friendly soldiers) has bedeviled armies for centuries. The development of gunpowder and firearms, which increased the distance between forces on the battlefield and thus expanded the chances for miscommunication, misidentification, and mistargeting in combat, increased the incidences of battlefield fratricide.

The advent of long-range artillery and air power in the 20th century created still more opportunities. So-called “friendly fire” episodes reflect not soldiers’ incompetence, carelessness, or treachery but the impossibility of determining precisely what is going on and who is who in the lethal and confusing environment of battle. In the 19th century, the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz termed this confusion and ambiguity the “fog of war,” and it constitutes an unavoidable part of warfare.

Military history features many famous instances of fratricide. Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson was shot by friendly pickets as he reconnoitered after the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. In May 1940, three German bombers attempting to strike a French airfield became lost and instead bombed the German city of Freiburg by accident.

Scores of American GIs during the Second World War wrote of being strafed by American or British aircraft, being the targets of their own artillery shells (often fired from miles behind the front), or accidentally receiving fire from adjacent friendly units. Increasing distance between combatants, the impossibility of perfect communications, and more frequent actions at night have all made distinguishing friend from foe more difficult.

Amidst the chaos and terror of combat, even the most capable and well-intentioned soldiers sometimes mistakenly target their own troops. Nor have technological innovations such as night-vision goggles and precision munitions eliminated the threat of fratricide in combat. The 2004 death of Army Ranger and former NFL player Pat Tillman during a firefight in Afghanistan from rounds fired by fellow American soldiers is perhaps the best-known recent example.

For more information

Geoffrey Regan, Blue on Blue: A History of Friendly Fire, New York: Avon Books, 1995.

Charles R. Shrader, Amicicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in Modern War, Ft Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1982.

Richard Townshend Bickers, Friendly Fire: Accidents in Battle from Ancient Greece to the Gulf War, London: Leo Cooper Books, 1994.

Bibliography

"Major General Omar N. Bradley and Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair during the recent maneuvers of the the Third Army in Louisiana. General Bradley is seen pointing out one ot the maneuver situations to General McNair," 1942, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

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U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

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In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the Department of Veteran Affairs exists "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan."

Primarily intended for veterans, the Department of Veteran Affairs does, nonetheless, provide a number of fascinating statistical offerings.

The National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics presents demographic data on veteran ethnicity, branch of service, officer or enlisted status, and more within the nation and individual states; veteran data from the 2000 census; Veteran Affairs expenditure data and medical program information; studies on topics such as veteran employability; and special reports covering women, Alaskan, and Native American veterans, among other topics.

Perhaps most immediately relevant to classroom research is a PDF displaying war statistics, from the American Revolution through Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Data includes the total number of servicemembers, battle fatalities, non-mortal wounds, non-battle fatalities, and living veterans per war and in combination. The page also offers a list of the date of death; age; and name of the last remaining veteran, widow, and dependent (if known) of the American Revolution, War of 1812, Indian Wars, Mexican War, Civil War, and Spanish-American War.

The Department of Veteran's Affairs also makes several children's sites available. VA Kids, K-5th provides department information—the motto, history, seal, Veterans Health Administration, technology, research, and Veteran Benefits Administration; veteran facts; the history and display of the U.S. flag; and online games. Games require Flash 6. VA Kids, 6th-12th Grades offers similar materials, designed for a more mature student.

The Teacher's Page (under "Kids' Page") offers a Veterans Day teaching guide, stories of U.S. customs and symbols, and three other suggested resources.

Finally, the site contains a gallery of past Veterans Day posters, useful for examining iconography and changing print design trends and technology.

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Teaching about Vietnam Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/06/2010 - 13:46

Date Published

Wed, 04/28/2010 - 20:00

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Thirty-five years ago in Vietnam on April 29, 1975, Irving Berlin's seasonally uncharacteristic, White Christmas hit the airwaves via Saigon's Armed Forces Radio. The North Vietnamese offensive against Saigon advanced, and the musical selection was a pre-arranged code to trigger a massive, dramatic American evacuation.

It became the largest helicopter evacuation in history—for 18 hours, heavily loaded Marine helicopters ferried 7,000 Americans and South Vietnamese evacuees from the American Embassy compound to the Tan Son Nhut airfield, ultimately to ships of the Seventh Fleet. Thousands more thronged the gates of the compound, hoping for a place on the airlift.

Teaching about the Vietnam era requires integrating competing narratives.

On April 30, Saigon fell, and in one sense, America's almost thirty-year involvement with war in Vietnam ended.

Sources and Teaching Models

The meanings and implications of the war in Vietnam are complex and still unresolved. Visceral response competes with the academic analysis to make sense of the era; emotion, memory, and personal experience loom large. Involvement in Iraq has intensified questions and invited contrast and comparison about just and unjust wars, about intervention and non-intervention, about containment, colonialism and post-colonialism, and about unilateral national foreign policy and international interests.

"Even today, many Americans still ask whether the American effort in Vietnam was a sin, a blunder, a necessary war, or a noble cause, or an idealistic, if failed, effort to protect the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government," historian Steve Mintz writes. (See the module Learn About the Vietnam War, part of the online U.S. history textbook, Digital History).

Online, materials continue to proliferate ranging from institutionally-based resources to personal websites from veterans and families. Finding materials becomes a question of selecting from a wealth of viable possibilities. The materials cited here address broad topics and issues of the era.

The National Archives, of course, and Presidential libraries are obvious and credible sources for essays and primary source documents. The Teachers section of the Library of Congress consolidates and extrapolates materials related to Vietnam such as selections from the Veterans Oral History Project. The search mechanism within the Teacher's pages help the selection of appropriate materials.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation provides balanced resources and lesson plans.

Similarly, Edsitement offers a variety of lesson plans and links to primary resources, also best selected through Edsitement's search mechanism simply entering the term Vietnam.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation

Founded by Jan Scruggs, the force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC—and an historical figure in his own right—The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation (VVMF) website is worth a visit from educators and students. Materials offer multiple perspectives on the era, explaining and contextualizing the war socially, politically, and culturally, and then explore how we have negotiated the legacies of the Vietnam era.

For teachers the VVMF is a goldmine of balanced educational resources. Echoes from the Wall: History, Learning and Leadership Through the Lens of the Vietnam War is a free secondary school curriculum guide including lesson plans and primary source materials "is designed not only to educate students about the Vietnam War, but also to use the lessons of that chaotic period to imbue future leaders, sitting in classrooms today, with a heightened sense of responsibility, citizenship and service." Lesson plans and the Teachers Guide cover causes of the war, conflict on the home front, analysis of those who served, the perspective of the Vietnamese, and the aftereffects.

The Vietnam Memorial is a vital site of memory and meaning.

Students will find background essays on the history and meaning of the wall and an opportunity to search for names on the wall. If there's any downside to the VVMF site, it's the lack of images of the memorial itself; however, a segue to GreatBuildings.com from Architecture Week leads to 3d-models, aerial views, google earth linkups, and a variety of perspectives on the Memorial in the context of its location. GreatBuildings.com also includes biographical information and commentary from the site designer, then-21-year-old Maya Lin.

And to support teachers and their curricula, the Teach Vietnam Teachers Network, a national group of nearly 300 members, serves as a point of contact for educators in individual states who answer questions from other teachers about effective teaching of the Vietnam War and development of lesson plans commensurate with state standards. Teachers are invited to request additional materials including The Wall the Heals and Why Vietnam Still Matters (books of essays), posters, a video, and Teacher's Guide.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/printable/section.asp?id=…

Elsewhere online

A lesson plan from Conflict and Consensus, a Montgomery County, Maryland, Teaching American History Grant program, Vietnam Primary Source Document Analysis guides students to examine the reasons for US involvement in Vietnam by analyzing primary source documents that relate to the Containment Doctrine.

Other online materials from Conflict and Consensus include videos of scholar analysis and classroom practice and teaching based upon examination of a Vietnam War cartoon. An additional lesson plan, Voices from the My Lai Massacre analyzing public perceptions of the event.

On AP Central, Professor Scott Kaufman from Francis Marion University in South Carolina offers Guide to Vietnam War Resources annotating diverse materials.

Vietnam War: Maps includes maps of selected battles, including the Tet Offensive and historic maps from the Department of State from 11BC through 1966. (Consider using eHistory essays cautiously, if at all; they appear with an accuracy disclaimer.)

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American POWS in Japanese Captivity

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charred remains of American POW being interred after World War II

Question

I recently read that, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, up to 1,000 Allied POWs were dying per week at the hands of the Japanese. Is this true?

Answer

I have found no indication of this figure in the works of several historians who have written about the fate of Allied POWs in Japanese captivity.

Extreme Measures

Gavan Daws, in Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific, states, “Tokyo’s policy as of late 1944 was ‘to prevent prisoners of war from falling into the enemy’s hands,’” citing proceedings of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and a research report of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service Section as his sources. Drawing on a document in the National Archives dated February 26, 1945, entitled “Captured Japanese Instructions Regarding the Killing of POW,” of the Military Intelligence Division, Daws cites an entry in the journal of the Japanese headquarters at Taihoku on Formosa that called for “‘extreme measures’ to be taken against POWs in ‘urgent situations: Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of the prisoners as the situation dictates. In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.’”

"... dispose of the prisoners as the situation dictates ..."

Daws concludes, however, that with regard to carrying out the policy of killing POWs in various camps, “the picture was mixed.” In Palawan, in the Philippines, Japanese soldiers machine-gunned, clubbed, and bayonets 150 POWs trying to escape air raid shelters that the captors had doused with gasoline and lit. During the Battle of Manila in February and March 1945, guards at the camp at Bilibid left without harming the POWs.

Historian David M. Kennedy has summarized figures regarding the brutal treatment of American POWs by the Japanese. “Ninety percent of American prisoners of war in the Pacific reported being beaten,” Kennedy states. “More than a third died. Those who survived spent thirty-eight months in captivity on average and lost sixty-one pounds.”

POWs and the Atomic Bomb

After noting that 20 American POWs died as a result of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to Japanese military commanders, and that between one and three American prisoners may have been killed by the Japanese after the bombing, Richard B. Frank states, “The average number of Allied prisoners of war or civilian internees who died each day of the effects of captivity at the hands of the Japanese easily doubled this toll.”

In a radio broadcast on the night of August 9, 1945, hours after the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, President Harry S. Truman linked the use of the bomb to the treatment by the Japanese of American prisoners of war: “Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” In a letter two days later, Truman wrote, “nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed by the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war.”

Bibliography

Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 324-25.

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 813.

President, “Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference,” August 9, 1945, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database). Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12165.

Harry S. Truman to Samuel Cavert, August 11, 1945, in Harry S. Truman and the Bomb: A Documentary History, ed. and commentary by Robert H. Ferrell (Worland, WY: High Plains Publishing Co., 1996), 72.

Van Waterford, Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II: Statistical History, Personal Narratives, and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Laborers, and Others Captured in the Pacific Theater (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994).

Bernard M. Cohen, and Maurice Z. Cooper, A Follow-up Study of World War II Prisoners of War (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954).

Images:
"U.S. medical men are attempting to identify more than 100 American Prisoners of War captured at Bataan and Corregidor and burned alive by the Japanese at a Prisoner of War camp, Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippine Islands. Picture shows charred remains being interred in grave: 03/20/1945," National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

"A volunteer of the Red Cross Motor Corps, at the loading of the Gripsholm, painting the destination on boxes of clothing, food, etc., for prisoners of war in Japan and the Far East," Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

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Elizabeth Glynn's Student-Led Monuments and Memorials Tour

Date Published

Sun, 09/11/2011 - 20:00

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Photo, 6th Grade DC Trip - Day 2, March 25, 2009, climbnh2003, Flickr, cc

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Five years ago, during my first year of teaching Advanced Placement U.S. History in Leesburg, VA, I created a final exam for my students that I hoped would change the way they thought about monuments and memorials.

Preparation

For the students to fully execute this project, they first had to understand the purposes of monuments and memorials. We spent two days reading materials that discussed the goals of monuments and memorials. Students also read an article from the Washington Post Magazine that detailed a failed attempt to build a monument on the National Mall. The third day we watched History Channel videos on the presidential monuments and war memorials and critiqued the information that was presented on each. After our discussion on the videos was completed, I introduced the students to the final exam project.

The project was to create a 45-minute tour of a monument or memorial in Washington, DC. Each year, I pre-selected 15 monuments and memorials that were in walking distance of each other. I divided the students into groups of three or four and gave them five class days to plan the tours and accompanying brochures. Each tour and brochure had to explain the purpose of the monument and memorial and help visitors understand its role in history. Both the tour and the brochure had to use at least one primary as well as one secondary source for the information presented.

Throughout the year in my classroom, we had worked with primary and secondary sources, which prepared students to work with sources on their own for this project.

The students also had to create an activity that reinforced the information they presented to the audience. This activity had to be something that everyone could participate in and that incorporated the sources from the tour the group presented. I purposely did not give much guidance on the activities beyond emphasizing the need for primary and secondary sources. I wanted students to create their own activity that they believed helped to explain the monument or memorial to the group.

Sources

Throughout the year in my classroom, we had worked with primary and secondary sources, which prepared students to work with sources on their own for this project. To the students, primary and secondary sources are generally items that they use for research purposes—not incorporate into an active event like a tour—so this stretched their understanding of how to use sources and of how to create historical meaning.

I made sure that there were no duplicate groups and that students had plenty of resources available to use. Before assigning the project, I made a trip to the National Park Service Ranger Station in Washington, DC, to pick up brochures on individual monuments and memorials and a trip to my local library to take out books on the monuments and memorials. (It was near the end of the school year, so computer labs and the school library were in high demand).

The sources and books ranged from children's books and nonfiction sources to historical association publications. When the students were researching for their tours, I wanted them to have a mix of sources available so that they could create a unique tour.

I wanted the students to realize that primary and secondary sources of a historic site are not just the building plans but anything that deals with the site!

I researched each monument and memorial to make sure they had primary and secondary sources available that the students could find through the different National Park Service websites. I explained, though, that the primary and secondary sources did not have to be just about the monument and memorial—they could be from a spectator, newspaper, fundraising committee, or a schedule of opening day events. I wanted the students to realize that primary and secondary sources of a historic site are not just the building plans but anything that deals with the site!

When the students were researching, finding, and printing their sources, they analyzed sources in terms of usefulness for the tour and accessibility for the audience. Many found that the primary sources they selected allowed them to weave a story into their tour. I didn't have any guiding activities for their primary/secondary sources so the students had to analyze and synthesize the information on their own.

Plans Come to Fruition

I was nervous to let the students go like this, but I knew they had to do the analysis on their own to be able to speak intimately of the monument or memorial on their tour. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial group did this with ease. Although they were excellent students in my class, they had not been comfortable with primary source analysis in our previous in-class activities. The group began by searching for only primary sources dealing with the building of the monument, letters from veterans, legislation in Congress, and the plans from Maya Lin.

They were able to find a common thread between all the sources but they were still missing a piece that would connect the audience to the memorial personally.

I kept encouraging this group to look through the books I had checked out from the private library, but they were determined to sort through what they had found online and in journals in the school library. The group took the approach of observing the materials, seeing who wrote them, finding bias, and trying to connect the sources all together. They were able to find a common thread between all the sources but they were still missing a piece that would connect the audience to the memorial personally.

When the students finally started going through the public library material, they found a book that changed the focus of their tour. The book was Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. One student made a decision—she was going to let the offerings (primary sources left behind at the wall) take the lead. The group laid their sources out on a desk. They had photocopied offerings that they liked from the book and placed them with the other primary sources they had collected to construct a narrative for their tour. This was an extremely effective way to demonstrate the connection between the memorial and its visitors.

I collected the brochures the students created before we went on the field trip to Washington, DC. I did this for two reasons: one, so that I had time to grade the brochures, and two, so that the students could not rely on their brochures to present the tours. I didn't want them to just walk through the sites using their brochures; I wanted them to add to them with additional information that they had found through their research.

The day we left for the trip, the students came prepared with props, primary sources, handouts, and prizes for their activities. Each student received a response booklet that they were to fill out for each tour. My questions in the booklet aimed at what the students learned and the strengths and weaknesses that they saw. I had my own grading rubric to use and the chaperones who came with me were also assigned rubrics to grade with so that I could reference them later.

I had high expectations for the tours and the students knew this.

The first presentation was the hardest for the students but once one group went, the rest were relieved and couldn't wait to present. I had high expectations for the tours and the students knew this. My secondary goal of this project was to impart my passion for historical sites and discussing them to the students, and I could see that my passion had passed on to several of the students.

For each tour, every student had to talk for at least 15 minutes (for groups of three, or 11 minutes for groups of four) and had to draw on one source in his or her portion. The groups that brought pictures or documents to hold or pass around to the audience were usually the ones that the other students enjoyed most.

The best part for all of us was the activities that went along with each tour. The students really went above and beyond in planning activities to review what they talked about. Many of the groups found additional primary sources for this portion. They would either do a card sort where you mix and match the picture to a person or you would have to put pictures in chronological order based on the building of the monument or memorial. Several students also planned scavenger hunts around their monument or memorial.

The activities were usually based on the size of the monument and memorial.

The activities were usually based on the size of the monument and memorial. For example, the Washington Monument usually had a matching activity due to the limited access to the monument and the structure of it. The 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial had a scavenger hunt based on the information on each plate since it was a smaller memorial with full access.

One memorial that invoked a lot of emotion for the students and for which students found primary sources easily is the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II by Union Station. This site is beautiful and the students really loved exposure to this piece of history. The site is dedicated to Japanese Americans' participation in World War II from military service to the internment camps.

The best tour site for a group of four was the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, which is divided into four sections. The World War II Memorial was good for a larger group because I could divide the students into the Atlantic and Pacific fronts.

Having students base the tour on primary sources forced them to look in the past and find out about the monument or memorial as it was being built and presented to the public.

To talk for 45 minutes about a monument or memorial is not easy if you do not know the information well. Having students base the tour on primary sources forced them to look in the past and find out about the monument or memorial as it was being built and presented to the public.

My overall goal was to expose students to the resources and history that surround them. These students may or may not go back to these sites, but they will remember their stories and the stories monuments and memorials can tell. A few, I feel, will return and be able to tell the people they are with a little bit about what they are seeing.

Bibliography

Books and Articles
Ashabranner, Brent K. Their Names to Live By: What the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Means to America. Bookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 1998.

Katz, Leslie George. "The American Monument." Eakins Press Foundation, 1976.

Kelly, John. "A Mom-umental Failure." The Washington Post Magazine, May 11, 2008: 14 – 18, 23 – 26

Walton, Eugene. "Philip Reid and the Statue of Freedom." Middle Level Learning. 24. (2005): M2 – M4.

Documentaries
Great Monuments of Washington, DC. The History Channel: 2005.

Monuments to Freedom - The Presidential Memorials. The History Channel: 2005.

The War Memorials. The History Channel: 2005.

For more information

Eighth-grade teacher Amy Trenkle also uses DC monuments and memorials with her students. What do her students make of one of the city's less-famous statues—a memorial to Christopher Columbus?

Read more about Elizabeth Glynn's Student-Led Monuments and Memorials Tour

Memorializing Veterans: Teaching with Place Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/28/2010 - 11:40

Date Published

Sun, 10/31/2010 - 20:00

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Photo, World War II - The Janesville 99 Memorial, May 9, 2009, cliff1066tm

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Veterans Day approaches! Last year, Teachinghistory.org introduced you to resources for collecting oral histories from veterans. Most of these resources still hold good—if you're interested in inviting a veteran into your classroom or leading your class in an oral history project, try History.com's Take a Veteran to School Day or the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project.

But what if you don't have the time or resources to arrange a speaker or manage oral history collection? What if your students are too young to appreciate a veteran's stories and their context? How can you honor the holiday and draw your students in?

How about teaching with monuments and memorials?

National Memorials

Everyone knows the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial, with its simple, iconic design, preserving the names of servicemen killed or missing in action. But what about the additions to the memorial? What prompted the creation of the two figural statues, The Three Servicemen and the Vietnam Women's Memorial? If you are far from Washington, D.C., your students can examine photographs (try Flickr Creative Commons for copyright-free images of many major memorials), read about the history of memorials, and draw their own conclusions.

What needs do the different pieces of the memorial fill? What do they say about Vietnam and its veterans? Who designed them? Who chose these designers? Where did the money to build them come from? When were they unveiled? What controversies have surrounded their design? Are there any special observances at these memorials on Veterans Day?

You could also look up other major DC memorials, built to remember very different wars and participants. Try the African American Civil War Memorial, District of Columbia War Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II, or the National World War II Memorial.

Local Memorials

Or perhaps you'd like to engage students with material closer to home. Look around your town. Ask at your local historical society. What monuments and memorials does your area have? A memorial for the Civil War? Korean War? Vietnam War? World War II? When were these built? Why might your area have memorials for some wars but not others? Who maintains them? What do area residents think of them? How do they resemble or differ from other memorials to veterans from the same war? How and where is Veterans Day memorialized in your town? Are there any observations at these memorials?

High-school teacher James A. Percoco shares his own experience engaging students with memorials in this video, while 8th-grade teacher Amy Trenkle demonstrates teaching with monuments and memorials in action, in our blog, as she takes her class to visit the Columbus Memorial Fountain in Washington, D.C.

If you can't arrange a field trip to a memorial, but would still like to have students visit and analyze one, try designing an individual field trip (IFT) for students. James A. Percoco tells you how.

Still at a loss for resources? Search our Website Reviews for online exhibits and archives full of primary sources, or our Museums & Historic Sites database for sites in your area.

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Military History Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/17/2008 - 10:39

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The U.S. Armed Forces maintain multiple historical offices within each branch of the military and within smaller units of each of the services. Photographs, essays, and oral histories are among the digitized resources of each facility. These include the following:

The Naval Historical Center includes a number of online photographs, exhibits, art, artifacts, document collections, publications and information on naval history, heritage and traditions, as well as a guide to U.S Navy Museums across the United States. The Teacher Resource Page includes lesson plans and activities organized by grade level.

The U.S. Army Center for Military History features an overview of military history, exhibits, artwork and photography, artifacts, document collections, publications and a directory of Amy museums. An Artifact of the Month highlights items from collections in the Army Museum system. Complete issues of Army History may be downloaded as PDFs.

Air Force Link provides an overview of the Air Force's history, heritage, important people, airpower, images, milestones and art.

The U.S. Marine Corps History Division includes information on Marine customs and traditions, dates of historical significance, and biographies, as well as historical documents, orders and speeches.

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Pearl Harbor Attack Map aharmon Wed, 02/29/2012 - 19:55

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Avenge Pearl Harbor, Our Bullets Will Do It, c.1942-3, NARA, Flickr Commons

Annotation

This interactive website on the attack on Pearl Harbor provides a chronological overview of the day's events. Each major event on the day's timeline is shown on a map of Hawaii, giving the events a visual place within the harbor geography and allowing site visitors to see where ships were in relationship to each other.

On the map, each major occurrence can be selected as the "full story." These individual full story pages provide a short textual overview of the event alongside a looping archival image and video slideshow. Clicking progresses through the slideshow for users interested in quickly revisiting an image after it has passed or who simply want to go through the slideshow at a faster pace. Many of the events also offer eyewitness quotes.

One of the most praiseworthy aspects of the site is that these quotes are not all from U.S. sailors and commanders. The voices selected include two women—a nurse and the daughter of a military man—and several Japanese airmen, submariners, and commanders. By providing voices from both sides of the attack, National Geographic avoids dehumanizing the Japanese through the absence of their own stories.

Remembrance Pearl Harbor

Splash Pullout Pearl Harbor

Learn Pearl Harbor

Veterans Day

Splash Pullout Veterans Day

Learn Veterans Day

Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945

International Relations

Military History

Western States

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Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project

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Photo, Portrait of Irene Parsons, circa 1945, University of North Carolina

Annotation

The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project provides access to a wide variety of sources related to the role of women in the military. These document the female war experience, how male-female integration has changed the armed forces, and more.

Sources available through this collection include diaries, oral histories, uniforms, military patches, scrapbooks, posters, books or pamphlets, photographs, and letters. The oral histories alone number more than 300, and are available as transcripts.

There are three ways to access the site content. You can either run a keyword search; select a military branch or related organization—Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, Navy, Red Cross, Cadet Nurse Corps, or foreign and/or civilian; or select a conflict—World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Post-Vietnam/1980s, or Gulf War/War on Terrorism. Selecting a branch or conflict will provide a list of the types of sources available, as well as how many of each there are. Select your source type of interest to see the individual items.

Advertising

Artifacts and Objects

Women's History Month

Splash Pullout Women's Month

Learn Women's Month

Veterans Day

Splash Pullout Veterans Day

Learn Veterans Day

Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930

Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945

Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s

Contemporary US, 1968-Present

Gender

Military History

Women

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Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered

Image

Graphite and brown pencil, "Self-portrait," Dox Thrash, Early 1930s

Annotation

The art of Dox Thrash (1893-1965) is exhibited in more than 60 images—mostly reproductions of his prints, but also including drawings and photographs of the artist at work. Born in Griffin, GA, Thrash spent most of his life in Philadelphia, which he expressively documented in his artworks. The exhibit proceeds along a timeline from birth to death that allows visitors to read a biographical narrative placing his life in appropriate historical context and to view images relevant to each period. Texts and images also can be downloaded in PDF format. Thrash's prints illuminated aspects of African American community life in Philadelphia with scenes of street life, workers, domestic scenes, and leisure activities. Thrash also portrayed scenes drawn from his experience as a soldier in World War I, life on the road, and the lynching of blacks.

In addition to his artistic creations, Thrash invented a new and influential printmaking technique—the carborundum process—in the 1930s as he worked in the WPA Graphic Arts Workshop. The exhibit provides descriptions and images of nine techniques Thrash used, and also includes four audio files of the curator discussing the process of putting the exhibit together. Valuable for students of the history of art and for those interested in expressive depictions of African American life and culture in Philadelphia.

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Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930

Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945

Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s