Two Views of Japanese Internment

This blog post is part of a series of posts written by my middle level/secondary social studies education students at Wichita State University. This post was written by Curtis Redus (@C_Note119 on Twitter).

December 7th, 1941 will always be, as President Roosevelt stated, a day that will live in infamy and rightfully so.  But it led to another less famous day that should also be held in infamy:  February 19th, 1942. 

One of the most important things in any history class is openness and honesty even if it might be uncomfortable.  Just as we must recognize that no historical figure, no matter how popular, is as grand or deific as we often portray them in lectures and textbooks.  We must also realize that even a nation that has done such great things as helping defeat Hitler can also be capable of terrible missteps.  I can't exactly pinpoint when I came to this core belief.  I suppose it was some point during my college studies.  While studying WWII I learned about FDR's order which called for the relocation of more than 100,000 immigrants of Japanese descent, executive order 9066.  I was shocked, but less so by the act than the fact that this was the first time I had heard about it.  After all, even 15 years ago, we as a nation, were far removed from the event and I find it unlikely that the textbooks were so heavily edited that the event was omitted completely.  As I thought back on it I am not sure if my teachers avoided the subject because it was uncomfortable for them or if they felt that we weren't mature enough to discuss the information.  The former could almost be forgiven but the latter is what I suspect was the case. 

As the old adage goes, "history is written by the winner".  While the events of the past don’t change, our interpretation does.  In this lesson students get to see the event from multiple perspectives.  It started out as a bell ringer but I think it could easily be expanded into a full or even multiple days of investigation.

Students tend to be quite perceptive especially when it comes to injustice and unfair treatment.  Much of this probably stems from the fact that they are growing up, often in situations they have little control over, where they have little input in the decisions their families make that directly affect their lives.  In consideration of this aptitude the lesson fit quite nicely in the middle of our World War II unit just after finishing a DBQ that asked: Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?  I feel like at this point students had a good feel for at least some of the anger that the American people felt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and that they may be able to grasp the perspective of the government.  It was also helpful that we had already discussed Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. This provided them good basis for the rationale of the Nazis and helped students make some connections.

Lesson Plan

Since this is a bell ringer my first goal was to draw the students back to the ideas of Pearl Harbor; the shock and the anger.  Then ask the students how they know who they can trust in a situation like this?

I played the United State Government Video explaining their rationale behind Executive Order 9066.  This video is just over nine minutes so while it is playing write the following questions on the board and then have the students respond after the video:

·         What is your impression of the video?

·         How do the camps seem to you? What do they make you think of?

Although you could play just one, I then played two interviews with George Takei and Pat Morita about their childhood experiences in the Japanese internment camps.  While these videos are playing write the following questions on the board and then have the students respond to the video(s):

·         How does this video differ from the government's video?

·         Who's point of view do you find to be more believable?

·         How would you feel if you were George or Pat?  How would you react if you were in their situations?

Most students have a healthy skepticism when it comes to authority so they had little trouble responding to the first video.  Most of them felt like it was disingenuous at best and downright dishonest in most cases.  After the last two clips I could sense the shock among the class and after fielding a handful of questions I fell back to any good history teacher's old standby response:  "That's a really good question that you should research and let us know what you find."  Ultimately the goal was to have students not only question the information with which they are presented but to realize they can seek out different perspectives on a topic to get a more well-rounded understanding.  And based on their responses I feel like we met that goal.

Note:  After teaching this lesson I came across this awesome lesson from Matt Moore that might make for a good expansion for this topic: http://teachingbeyondthetextbook.wordpress.com/