Mrs. Watson's Room 102

Flash mob in the Copenhagen Metro. Copenhagen Phil playing Peer Gynt. – YouTube.

The Green Fire Film Project – YouTube.

Franks Landing – YouTube.

Fishing Rights This is a nice overview! Notice the connections between political, cultural and environmental issues.

There are a lot of clips on the internet machine, but in class we will be watching two parts to a documentary on the events surrounding Emmett’s death.

Part One

Part Two

What does his murder say about the times in which he lived? What impact did his murder have on the civil rights movement?

Compare and contrast this murder to Trayvon Martin’s killing. Here’s a CNN article that tries to this, and another article that raises several points.

Professor Mellisa Harris-Perry has done several stories on this, and since information is not all known, she tries to put Trayvon’s death in some type of historical perspective.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In remembrance, here’s a collection of recent pictures of the abandoned city of Pripyat. I’ve also included some pictures of the area before the disaster. The area around the reactor will be unlivable for hundreds of thousands of years.

via 50 Pictures Of Chernobyl 25 Years After The Nuclear Disaster.

OK. So I’m pretty sure the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they included the following line to Art 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

That line gets used, or forgotten, when convenient. During his 1960 presidential campaign, JFK was attacked for being Catholic. (And an IRISH Catholic at that!))  He addressed that issue in a speech to a “preacher” convention in TX. I know, it’s 11 min long, but it is pretty good. And, it was possibly misquoted so that means you need to hear the whole speech.

Religion has been playing a huge role in this election so far. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is problematic for some, but polls show that it isn’t the big issue people thought it would be.  A few people are absolutely convinced that President Obama is a cue the scarey music Muslim, and they are the same people who think Romeny isn’t “really” a Christian, or that were upset Obama attended a Christian church for 20 years with a reverend they don’t like (not typical Muslim behavior.) Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum both openly talk about being Catholics. Nobody seems to be upset. Case closed, right?

Nope. Rick “Makes Me Throw Up” Santorum had the following to say about JFKs speech:

Now, if you listened to JFK’s speech, did you hear what Santorum claims? There was a pretty big uproar, and he walked that comment back after a few days of getting attacked by pretty much everyone. And for someone who is running on his “Catholic Christian” creds, I’d think he would NOT want to alienate people like my mom who adored Kennedy. One of the best rebuttals came from Joan Walsh, a Catholic, whose article corrected Santorum on several lines.

Kennedy gave this speech just over 50 years ago, but what he said then still gives us pause today. Walsh’s article also gives a quote on religion from President Reagan:

“We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief.”

Listening to the speech in 1960, reading Reagan’s quote, then listening to the talk today, one could think we are on a different planet.

I could find nothing negative written about JFKs speech in 1960, though there must have been some. Couldn’t find anything negative about Reagan’s quote either.

Rick Santorum is showing voters how he would govern…very much as a type of Catholic I wasn’t raised as. That is his right to do so, but I can’t help but see the irony that the very thing people were worried about JFK doing in 1960 is being displayed by Santorum.

(Side note- apparently Polk wasn’t baptized until just before he died. He converted to the Methodist beliefs, but didn’t want to upset his wife so he kept going to her Presbyterian church. Since I respect the Constitutions, how and where and if he worships doesn’t matter to me.  It is enough that he invaded Mexico.)

Here are two clips from the kahnacademy.org files.

Bay of Pigs

Cuban Missile Crisis. This one does a quick review of the Bay of Pigs and the Cold War in general as background.

As you listen to this portion of their presidential debate, listen for each man’s position on what to do about Castro. Remember, the Bay of Pigs invasion was already being planned under President Eisenhower, and Nixon was his VP.

Do you hear the economic sanctions argument? The idea of containment? What was their fear of Castro’s takeover? Why does Nixon bring up the United Nations?

Do you have grandparents on Medicare? Did your parents go to college with federal loans? Do you plan to fill out the FAFSA to see if you qualify for college aid? Did you go to Head Start? Do you like clean water? Did you watch Sesame Street or other shows on public television?

Do you like the idea of voting without paying a tax to do so? Do you like the idea of being able to not lose a job opportunity based on your sex, race or country of origin? These are just a few of the things we still have from the Great Society. There are critics, however.

In class we will look at the Great Society, based on Chapter 15, Section 3. We will be using Thinking Like An Historian primary and secondary sources to analyze its success and recording thoughts on the graphic organizer. This lesson also includes a list of many more Great Society programs you can add to your C15S3 graphic organizer.
Here is a quick review. It will make sense if you’ve already done the reading.

HipHughes is in New York. I get a kick out of his “quick” reviews. The test he keeps referring to is the New York Regents test all NY students have to take.

Part of Hiroshima’s effectiveness is in telling the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of actual people. Here are some other stories from some Washingtonian perspectives.

from the Times article…”It was a beautiful summer morning, and people were beginning to stir. Fred Hasegawa was waiting for a train to take him downtown to work, widening the streets of Hiroshima for fire lanes. Not far away, Mary Fujita was catching a streetcar for an early dental appointment. Ken Nakano and other middle-school students were gathering at the sweet potato patch they had been assigned to work. To the north, in a prisoner of war camp near Toyama, Bryce Lilly was hauling molten slag from the furnaces at a steel mill. At another camp, even farther north, in the mountains near Hanawa, Roger Lawhead had climbed the snowy path to begin another long day mining copper. Three thousand miles away, in an army camp in the recently liberated Philippines, Pfc. Bill Endicott was learning to shoot a Thompson machine gun, preparing to invade Japan. Hours earlier at Tinian in the South Pacific, one of the staging areas for that planned invasion, Richard Wilson wondered what was up with the mysterious airmen who had landed their B-29s on the north field, had the planes serviced in secrecy and then taken off in the night. One of those B-29s from Tinian, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima that morning. It was an attempt, American military leaders said, to shorten the war and circumvent an invasion of Japan. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan’s leaders announced their surrender within days, on Aug. 14. That one searing atomic moment over Hiroshima 50 years ago Aug. 6 changed the lives of everyone involved in the war. Civilians like Hasegawa, Fujita and Nakano were devastated by the bomb. They are among the few to survive it into old age. Prisoners of war like Lilly and Lawhead were freed by it. And soldiers like Endicott and Wilson were spared an invasion. Here are their stories.”

via Seattle Times Trinity Web: Hiroshima Memories.

“World War II is the story of the 20th Century. The war officially lasted from 1939 until 1945, but the causes of the conflict and its horrible aftermath echoed for decades in both directions. While feats of bravery and technological breakthroughs still inspire awe today, the majority of the war was dominated by unimaginable misery and destruction. In the late 1930s, the global population stood at approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the nations of the Axis Powers and the Allies resulted in some 80 million deaths — killing off about 4 percent of the whole world.This series of entries was published weekly on TheAtlantic.com from June 19 through October 30, 2011, running every Sunday morning for 20 weeks. In this collection of 900 photos spread over 20 essays, I tried to explore the events of the war, the lives of the people fighting at the front and working back home, and the effects of the trauma on everyday activity. These images still give us glimpses into the experiences of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents, moments that shaped the world as it is today.”

via World War II – The Atlantic. (Click to access this series)

There are some fantastic photographs in this series, and the captions explain the background of it photo. I read through the comment sections and survivors of this war have added their own thoughts.  I thought it was interesting that within the comments in the 20th and final series, there is a discussion on how many communists are in our current congress. The accuser was asked by several people who they are.  He finally said they were the “Progressive Caucus.” Hmmmm.  (The Crucible came to mind….)

In September 1940, the United States implemented its first peacetime draft, requiring that all male citizens and resident aliens between 21 and 36 register for compulsory military service. Fifteen months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States declared war on the Axis Powers (chiefly Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan). Americans quickly mobilized in support of a total war effort.

Washington, a comparatively small and undeveloped state, played a disproportionately important role in the country’s efforts to gear up for war.

via HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.

Click on the link to get a pretty good idea of how important Washington was to the war effort. From planes to powdered eggs, from battleships to atomic bombs, Washington provided Allies with needed supplies for the war. All those jobs meant our population grew, and all those people need housing and their own supplies.

Although it isn’t mentioned in this article, a former students did an oral history on a lady who told about a Boeing plant in Chehalis during the war.

Talk to your family elders.  Ask what they did during the war.  Ask about rationing, about family members who may have fought. Ask about war brides in the family. Somewhere in your family stash of “old things” you might even have a blue star.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt delivered a speech to congress requesting a declaration of war. Despite the previous decade of Japanese aggression,  FDR made the attack sound like a complete surprise. What reasons does he give for calling it a sneak attack?

We tend to think of December, 1941 only for Pearl Harbor. The map in your text shows several areas of attack at that time. Here is further information on what happened in the Philippines and what became known as the Bataan Death March. Warning, parts of this video are graphic.

Nearly 400,000 German POWs were brought to the United States during World War II, and officials recorded precisely 2,222 individual attempts by the Germans to flee their camps. POWs scaled fences, smuggled themselves out in or under trucks or jeeps, passed through the gate in makeshift GI uniforms, cut the barbed wire or tunneled under it, or went out with work details and simply walked away. Their motives ranged from trying to find their way back to Germany which none ever did to merely enjoying a few hours, days, or weeks of freedom.But none of these assorted breakouts could match in audacity, scale, or drama the plan under way at Compound 1A at Papago Park. It would trigger the largest manhunt in Arizona history, bringing in local law enforcement, the FBI, and even Papago Indian scouts.

via The Not-So-Great Escape: German POWs in the U.S. during WWII.

Very interesting article. We go to that park every time we visit our daughter. I had no idea this had happened. Next time I am there, though, I will try to find some signs of this former POW camp!

Note- the comments to this article are also interesting.  Here is one memory shared:

This story brought back memories of my Mother, a former WAC from Pennsylvania who passed away in 2000. She was stationed at a bomber base in Texas where German POW’s did manual labor. She said that where she worked she could see POW’s working in a warehouse that was attached to her office. One day she saw a crate about to fall on a POW’s head, and yelled a warning to him in Pennsylvania Dutch, which saved him from harm. Weeks later, one of the guards asked her if she would accept a gift from that POW in gratitude. It was a carved rendition of a chalet, which unfortunately has not survived the years.

FYI- We also had German POWs in Washington. Both Italian and German POWs were kept in Seattle at Ft. Lawton. I read this article and learned there was resentment by the black troops over the favorable way the POWs were treated. An Italian POW was found dead, and 23 blacks were charged. Interesting story! The site also has maps showing the segregation of the “colored” troops.

App. 4000 POWs were kept at Fort Lewis, nearby Camp Meriwhether and Fort Vancouver, too. Wow.
 

Richland’s unique “alphabet houses” were designed by Spokane, Washington, architect G. Albin Pherson to accommodate the tremendous growth in population at the Hanford site during World War II. He was given less than 90 days to completely design the entire new Richland community, including streets, utilities, and commercial and residential building plans. Each housing design was assigned an alphabet letter designation and included single-family homes, duplexes, apartments, and dormitories. As Richland was a “company town” until 1958, these homes maintained a distinct uniformity for many years. One neighborhood of 162 alphabet houses that have largely maintained their original appearance, designated the “Gold Coast Historic District,” was named to the National Register of Historic Places in April 2005.

via Alphabet houses.

This extreme growth was experienced all over the United States, but coastal cities and the west coast grew the fastest. Once small towns were unable to handle the number of people flocking to war industries for jobs.

In the case of Richland, it became home to the thousands of worker on the Hanford Nuclear Plant, part of the Manhattan Project. Workers at this plant never knew they were helping to make the atomic bomb.

These  homes, BTW, will also be seen in Seattle, the small little town that was Bellvue, Bremerton, Aberdeen…anywhere were workers flocked.  Do any of these houses look familiar?

The Four Freedoms of FDR (listen)

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941

via Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms Series From The Saturday Evening Post.

These Rockwell paintings will later be used to sell war bonds. Thousands of people ordered special re-prints of these covers. (They were originally each separate magazine covers.)

After 9-11, President Bush gave a speech to a joint session of congress. In it, he makes references to FDR’s speech and the rise of totalitarianism. Since at that time so many were blaming religions, the President addressed that and I included that portion. (Interesting note-when I searched for a video of the entire speech, many clips did not include the president’s assurance that the US did not blame Muslims, rather the terrorists that were trying to hijack that religion. Since one of the freedoms was freedom of religion, I thought that was a bit odd…)

“…I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.

The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.

It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Americans are asking, “Why do they hate us?”

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other…

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way.

We’re not deceived by their pretenses to piety.

We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies…

Today, what would you consider to be the 4 basic freedoms? How would you illustrate them?

“We are anonymous. If people ask you what you do here, tell ‘em you are file clerks. People aren’t interested in file clerks — not enough to ask questions.” Women and men who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) were instructed to keep their service secret. As spies, soldiers, and scientists, many of the women who had contributed to the war effort during World War II remained silent even after those wars had ended. The tasks that women were asked to perform went beyond the homefront and into the front lines.” -Gwen Perkins

via Not Just Nurses: American Women in World War II.

BTW, the iconic Rosie the Riveter poster is based on a real person.

The artist Norman Rockwell actually had the first Rosie painting, used on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943.

What is the difference between the two images? Do a google image search for “Rosie the Riveter.” What other images do you see?

During the war, the role of women in war production had entered all parts of the culture. Rosie the Riveter even had a song. Today, there is even a Rosie the Riviter Trust with its own website. This group records stories and images. Fun fact, Rockwell’s painting sold in 2002 for just under five million dollars!

Talk to older women in your life and ask them about “Rosie.” Ask them what types of jobs either they or their moms had during the war.

Many of the earliest knitters for World War II had knit for Victory as children or young adults during World War I. Knitting was for them a natural and immediate response to war. “The men hardly have time to grab their guns before their wives and sweethearts grab their needles and yarn,” claimed Time on July 21, 1940. Knitting provided warmth and comfort for the soldier and therapeutic distraction for the knitter.

via HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.

Even if you don’t knit, you will find the article interesting. This was taken very seriously and was for many women, a hands on way to show support for the ones they loved overseas.  There are also references to women kitting to keep our “local” protectors warm.  These would be the home guard who stayed up nights, searching the skies for Japanese attack.

I am thinking that when we look through the 1940s Life magazines and RHS annuals, we should see some signs of “the knitting”.

 

 

Participation in the Bracero program was limited to agricultural workers, and not open to urban dwellers. Prospective Braceros often were asked to show their calloused hands to prove that they were experienced farm laborers. Workers were fingerprinted as part of the processing procedure, and were fumigated with DDT before being allowed to enter the United States.

via America on the Move | Opportunity or Exploitation: The Bracero Program.

Click on the link to see more pictures and get further information on the bracero program.

In class, we will be going through a powerpoint presentation on braceros and you will be taking notes on the basic information. Then, we will watch the following video:
Forgotten Voices: The Story of the Bracero Program

This second video has a very interesting beginning. He shows advertising examples to prove his point that Americans were not being told how their food was being picked, nor by whom. He is rather harsh on growers, packers and advertisers. Interesting point of view.

In 2010, Stephen Colbert from The Cobert Report went out to spend a day as a migrant farm worker. He then testified in Congress. There are several parts to this available on youtube, but here are two of the most significant: his testimony and his questions from Rep. Chu.
Testimony

Rep Chu’s questions

The issues of the bracero program are still with us. The Mexican economy became even more tied to that of the US (remittances.) An economic pattern of circular migration became very established with this program. Bracero workers who stayed were one of the main reasons President Reagan signed the alien amnesty law in the 1980s. And, on a strictly economic note, growers in some southern states today who passed very strict immigration laws are finding getting workers extremely difficult. That impacts the food prices for all of us.

According the the Seattle Labor Council, 21% of bracero workers contracted in the Pacific Northwest. Their Farm Labor History website has some very interesting information as to why the program was controversial in our area. You need to scroll down to the section on braceros, though all the information is fascinating.

On a personal note, we had several RHS students get to become citizens through the amnesty program in the 80s. They were so proud. They brought their flags to school to show me. It still cost their families a lot of money, but it was worth it to them. In every case I can remember, their grandfathers had been braceros.

In this series of paintings, Japanese-American Roger Shimomura combined aspects of his Pop Art and cartoon-based imagery with reminiscences of his family’s internment during World War II. An American Diary is based on a personal diary written by his grandmother, Toku Shimomura, while the Shimomura family was interned at Camp Minidoka in Hunt, Idaho. Shimomura has commemorated the experience by combining the Japanese literary tradition with flat comic-book style characters, outlined in black.

via Roger Shimomura | Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle.

Click on the link to see his artistic interpretations of his grandmother’s diary. I think you will like his style. (On one of his links I found a painting he did of himself box-kicking a political pundit that I have also fantasized about kicking, too.) He is very talented.  See how many signs of the 1940s are in the painting below.