The Face of the Enemy?

While many groups of Americans faced hardships during WWII, none had it harder than Japanese Americans.

After the attacks on Pearl Harbor Americans were understandably fearful of further attacks and spies. In early 1942, by Presidential executive order 9066, Japanese-Americans living primarily on the west coast were taken to internment camps as a security measure following the massive Pearl Harbor raid that temporarily incapacitated the Pacific fleet. A national sense of outrage consumed Americans. Strangers on the streets looked at one another with a new awareness.

The US Government claimed internment camps were vital to American security and that every effort was made to provide for their Japanese guests.

Compare the Government claims to actual photos of the camps taken from Ansel Adams famous book Born Free and Equal.

Watch this video to see what life in the camps was really like.

Listen to the song Kenji by Fort Minor.

1) Were American fears justified?
2) Can you tell who the enemy is just by looking at them?
3) Why weren't German's and Italians also sent to 'camps?'
4) Did all Japanese Americans go willingly? Who was Fred Korematsu?
5) What lessons did we learn from this mistake? 
6) Did the United States ever apologize?

Doris Miller

In 1941, Miller was a 22-year-old mess attendant on the USS West Virginia. At the time, black sailors were consigned to roles in the messman branch — work that entailed swabbing decks, cooking and shining officers' shoes.

He had awoken at 6 a.m. and was collecting laundry when the Japanese attack began and an alarm sounded on the ship, according to the Navy. Miller headed to the antiaircraft battery magazine, but it had already been destroyed by torpedo damage. He proceeded to the deck, where he was assigned to carry his wounded comrades, including the ship's captain. Miller was strong: a former high school football player in Waco, Texas, he was the ship's heavyweight boxing champion.

"Miller went topside, carried wounded on his shoulders, made several trips up and down, wading through waist-deep water, oil-slicked decks, struggling uphill on slick decks," Navy Rear Adm. John Fuller said in 2016.

The young sailor then took over a .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun and fired it until the ammunition ran out. No matter that he'd never been trained on the weapon.

1) What is an 'Unsung Hero?'

2) Who was Third Class Cook Doris Miller?  Why was he given this stamp?

3) What opportunities did the war offer African Americans?   What Hardships did black soldiers still endure?

4) What was the 'Double V' campaign?

5) What even greater honor has Doris Miller received?  Do you agree?

Days Of Infamy

Like Pearl Harbor, the attacks on 9/11/01 forever changed us as a country. Not since December 7, 1941 had our nation suffered such a devastating defeat by a foreign power on our own soil. In the days after 9/11 comparisons to Pearl Harbor were frequently made. Both attacks resulted in a spirit of American unity. A common enemy was identified. A national government galvanized American energies to combat and destroy the forces that attacked the homeland.

Two years ago the US surgeon general described the upcoming grim period of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States as a "Pearl Harbor moment" and a "9/11 moment." 

Do you agree?  Why or why not?

Complete this Venn Diagram. 

Interstellar Dust Bowl

In “Interstellar,” humanity is endangered by a blight that is gradually eliminating the number of crops that are viable on Earth. The world economy and national governments have shrunk dramatically. Drones race through Midwestern skies, abandoned by the intelligence programs that set them aloft, and crash into fields where they are scavenged by entrepreneurial farmers like Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former pilot who still dreams of flying. Violent dust storms, straight out of documentary footage of Dust Bowl storms, rise like mountains in the skies, and the particles fill children’s lungs, killing them. If it is not made explicit that the disaster is man-made, the use of testimony from actual Dust Bowl survivors  does. 

“This really happened. It’s just a question of could it happen on a global scale, or in such a way that our existence on the planet would be imperiled?"

What do you think?

List 3 specific steps we can take to prevent future human/ environment disasters like the dust bowl.

Dear Mrs. Harrison

 

During your tour of the country, you learned about ordinary Americans who experienced the Great Depression. Like Lorena Hickok, you will now report your discoveries. Use the information in your scrapbook to write a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt describing the hardships people endured during the Depression.

Your letter must have the following:

1. An appropriate date, salutation, and closing.
2. A brief introduction summarizing the states you visited and the types of people you met.
3. A description of your visit to at least two states. For each state, include:

• information on the hardships people faced during the Depression and the ways in which they endured those hardships.
• a quotation and one or more facts from the reading.
• any relevant Vocabulary Terms.

4. At least four of these words: betrayal, change, depressed, desperation, destitute, dreadful, encourage, honorable, hope, ideals, plague, pride, self-respect, shame, stress, suffer, worth.
5. A conclusion summarizing your thoughts about how ordinary Americans endured the hardships they faced during this time period.

Alphabet Soup

John Green teaches you about the New Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to pull the united States out of the Great Depression of the 1930's. Did it work? Maybe. John will teach you about some of the most effective and some of the best known programs of the New Deal. They weren't always the same thing. John will tell you who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it. He'll also get into how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and citizens, and will even reveal just how the Depression ended. (hint: it was war spending)

Critics of FDR's programs called them an 'Alphabet Soup' of confusing acronyms.  Conservatives felt FDR's government had no business regulating crop prices or digging ditches.  Radicals on the other hand felt that the President's New Deal hadn't gone far enough in redistributing the wealth.

What role should the government have in our lives?  Should the Government provide schools and roads?  Military?  Welfare? Health care?  Paid work leave?  Retirement?

What does our current POTUS think about the future of these programs?

Black Tuesday

The Great Depression in the United States began on October 29, 1929, a day known forever after as “Black Tuesday,” when the American stock market–which had been roaring steadily upward for almost a decade–crashed, plunging the country into its most severe economic downturn yet. Speculators lost their shirts; banks failed; the nation’s money supply diminished; and companies went bankrupt and began to fire their workers in droves. Meanwhile, President Herbert Hoover urged patience and self-reliance: He thought the crisis was just “a passing incident in our national lives” that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to try and resolve. By 1932, one of the bleakest years of the Great Depression, at least one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed.

1) Why was it called 'Black Tuesday?'

2) What is 'Black Friday?'

3) In economics what does 'being in the black' mean?

4)  How is this name misleading?

5) Who took the blame for the market crash?  Why?  Was it fair?

6) What measures were taken by the Government in the aftermath of the Crash?'

7) What actions should they have taken?

8) Could another crash like this happen again?  What would be the effects?

1920's Consumerism

In the 1920's the economy shifted from wartime to peace and began an era of consumerism. Prices dropped and what people couldn't afford they began buying on credit.

Advertisers, now reaching millions of consumers on a daily or weekly basis, hired movie stars and sports figures to persuade Americans to buy all types of products, from washing machines to chewing gum. Business had become America's secular religion, thanks to advertising. Bruce Barton's 1925 book comparing religion and business, The Man Nobody Knows, declared Jesus Christ's parables as "the most powerful advertisements of all time.... He would be a national advertiser today."

Barton's philosophy was that good advertising appealed to consumers and created desire for a product. According to Barton, " The American conception of advertising is to arouse desires and stimulate wants, to make people dissatisfied with the old and out-of-date."  Barton told his employees that their ads should have a theme, an interesting headline, and a purpose to direct consumers to act in a particular way (usually to buy a product).  His ads often used catch slogans.

In 1919 Bruce Barton co-founded his own advertising firm whose clients included General Electric, General Motors, and US Steel.  His advertising firm was also one of the first agencies to use radio, rather than newspapers and magazines, for advertising.  Barton grew to be one of the most successful advertising executives of the 1920s.

What is the 'formula' for successful advertising?

What other techniques did advertisers use?

How do commercials get us to buy stuff we don't need?

Pick a product from the 1920's.

Create your own ad.

See some sample ads. 

Inflation Calculator:  How much would my product cost in 1920's?

How have perceptions of many of these products (i.e. cigarettes) changed over time?

The most important part of an AD is its 'signature' or 'logo'.  How many of these famous brands do you recognize?

Original O.G.

Dillinger and Capone were the 'Original' Original Gangstas. How 'Gangsta' are you?

However 'well-intentioned,'  the 18th Amendment had some rather unintended consequences.

Gangland violence in Chicago captured headlines and attention across the nation the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 14, 1929, and fueled rumors in Butler County. The crime later was called "the most spectacular of the decade in Chicago." There were more than 500 gangland murders in the Windy City in the 1920s.

The 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre took the lives of seven men by machine-gun and shotgun fire at about 10:30 a.m. in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street in Chicago. The mass shooting climaxed a struggle for control of Chicago's North Side. It pitted the powerful gang of Al Capone against the faltering group led by George (Bugs) Moran. Capone ordered his lieutenants to annihilate the entire Moran gang -- and they almost did it. Moran and two other gang members approached the garage, but fled when they believed police were raiding the building.

Moran had been lured to the massacre site by the prospect of buying bonded whisky. At stake was the security of Capone's illicit liquor business, estimated at more than $60 million a year by federal authorities. The killings solidified the 30-year-old Capone's control over the Chicago whisky trade and other criminal activities.

The Chicago crime still dominated conversations four days later when three strange men checked into the Anthony Wayne Hotel at High Street and Monument Avenue in Hamilton. They aroused suspicion by arriving in an expensive car with Illinois license plates and asking for the hotel's highest priced room.

Who were these mystery men and why did they come to Hamiltion, Ohio?

What connection did other notorious gangsters like John Dillinger have to this area?

How were gangsters of the '30s different from gangsters today?

Bet you didn't know Mr. Kelly is related to a notorious 20s gangster either.

Who would win:  Al Capone or Blackbeard the Pirate?

Would you want to live in a 'Gangster's Paradise?'

Prohibition

Who were these women?

The 'noble experiment' as it was called in the 1920s was intended to reduce alcohol abuse, strengthen families and make America a better place.

But it didn't stop people from drinking, it just criminalized them, and it brought violence and corruption to our streets.

On March 23, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages.

On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment for good.

1) Was Prohibition a success or failure?  Explain.

2) How has the government continued to prohibit other health risks like smoking? Why?

3) What responsibility does the government have to protect the health of its citizens?

4) What Federal agency regulates our food & drugs? Who is in charge?

5) Should the Government ban fast food? Why/ not?

6) What American foods have been banned in other countries?