As a young man, Takashi Hoshizaki was imprisoned on McNeil Island, Washington in 1944 for resisting the draft for World War II.  His resistance was part of a broader legal battle for the civil rights of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, including Takashi's family, imprisoned in American concentration camps.  This lesson includes a 7-minute introduction video, lesson plan notes, activities, vocabulary, and educator resources.

This kit provides teachers, college faculty and other educators with the materials needed to engage students in a dynamic and constructivist process of learning how antiwar movements have been perceived by the people in the United States and how the U.S. media has constructed that public perception. The subject areas covered include U.S. history, African-American studies, labor studies, Latino studies, media studies, Native American studies, peace studies, sociology and womenŒ_ΏŁ_ studies among many others.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Bracero Program. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This course discusses China's emergence as a global power, which has arisen out of two centuries of significant change. It explores those transformations from 1800 to the present by examining the advent of foreign imperialism in the nineteenth century, the collapse of the last imperial dynasty in 1911, China's debilitating war against Japan, the communist revolution, and the tumultuous history of the People's Republic of China from 1949. Also, this course addresses the historical transformations that have shaped contemporary Chinese politics, ethnicity, gender, environment, economics, and international relations.

This course surveys Japanese history from the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 to the present and explores the local and global nature of modernity in Japan. It highlights key themes, including the emergence of a modern nation-state, the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire, the development of mass consumer culture and the middle class, and the continued importance of historical memory in Japan today.

This activity “Becoming aware of the Japanese American Internment Camp Experience” is intended to help students become aware of, and sensitive to, the Japanese American interment camp experience. They will develop a sense of empathy by simulating the situations which Japanese American children faced.

In this activity, students read cards about various civil rights protests and events during the 1940s. For each event, students match the issue (voting rights, fair employment, fair housing, or segregation in public places) at stake, identify the key people involved and what region of the country it took place in. After students have completed all the cards, an optional writing task asks students to synthesize the historical content by writing a letter to a relative serving overseas describing the efforts of civil rights activists in the 1940s. There is some assembly of materials required for this activity. This activity has optional Smartboard elements but can be completed without a Smartboard.

This course will expose students to tools and methods of analysis for use in assessing the challenges and dangers associated with nuclear weapons in international politics. The first two weeks of the course will look at the technology and design of nuclear weapons and their means of production. The next five weeks will look at the role they played in the Cold War, the organizations that managed them, the technologies that were developed to deliver them, and the methods used to analyze nuclear force structures and model nuclear exchanges. The last six weeks of the course will look at theories and cases of nuclear decision making beyond the original five weapon states, and will look particularly at why states pursue or forego nuclear weapons, the role that individuals and institutions play, and the potential for both new sources of proliferation and new consequences.

is a detailed account of the December 7, 1941, attack. More than 100 photos and descriptions look at the 7 U.S. battleships moored along Battleship Row that morning, attacks off Ford Island, attacks in the Navy yard area, attacks on airfields, Japanese aircraft and midget submarines used in the attacks, aerial combat, and more.

On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan attacked a US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Pre-existing racial tensions and “yellow peril” hysteria magnified as the American public grew increasingly suspicious of Japanese Americans and uncertain of their loyalty. They were regarded as potential spies and anti-Japanese propaganda quickly spread. Then, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry (two-thirds of whom were US citizens) were forced to evacuate from their homes and report to assembly centers. From there, they were moved to one of ten internment camps, or War Relocation Centers, located in remote areas of seven states—California, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Arkansas.For the next three years, Japanese Americans acclimated to life behind barbed wire and under armed guard. Uprooted from their lives, they found themselves in strange and uncomfortable environments. They had to adapt to their new situation by adjusting to new living conditions, attending new schools, and finding inventive ways to pass the time. They attempted to maintain a sense of normalcy by attending religious meetings and by finding employment.This exhibition tells stories of everyday lives in Japanese Internment camps during World War II. It was created as part of the DPLA’s Digital Curation Program by the following students as part of Dr. Joan E. Beaudoin's course "Metadata in Theory and Practice" in the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University: Stephanie Chapman, Jessica Keener, Nicole Sobota, and Courtney Whitmore.

In this activity, students compare World War II propaganda posters from the United States, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. Then students choose one of several creative or analytical writing assignments to demonstrate what they've learned.

Make connections between Dorothea Lange's images and the history of the Dust Bowl, the Depression, World War II, and large-scale agriculture in the United States. Students learn about the role of photography in news stories and write their own news story.

The New Deal and World War II unit features lessons ranging from Social Security to the dropping of the atomic bomb. It includes a Structured Academic Controversy examining whether the New Deal was a success, and an Inquiry into Japanese-Americans internment during the war. In the Social Security lesson plan, students evaluate historical claims and examine primary documents from the period. Students explore causes of the Zoot Suit Riots in California, and take part in a structured role-play where groups are asked to choose an image that commemorates the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Refugee Scholars Workshop uses archival dossiers to place students in the roles of WWII Rockefeller Foundation decision-makers, deciding which European scholars under threat to rescue and bring to America.

These learning materials are designed to engage students in hands-on activities that stimulate them, and, most importantly, encourage critical thinking in the classroom. These educational activities in this section will provide high school social studies, media education and language arts teachers, as well as college journalism and communication educators with extensive lesson plans, resource materials, and discussion questions to introduce students to the world of war correspondence.

Reporting America at War offers students invaluable insights as it allows them to experience the life of a war reporter through the lens and the experiences of such noted journalists such as Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, David Halberstam, Chris Hedges and Morley Safer. The video explores press censorship, message control, the power of pictures, finding the right words, and works by Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow.

A study of the resettlement of Japanese Americans after WWII and the ongoing hardships and discrimination they experienced in the postwar years. This project was made possible through generous support from the National Parks Service Japanese American Confinement Sites program.

This National Park Service website offers links to a variety of articles about the history and politics of Alaska. Users can download PDF articles about World War II in Alaska, the Alaska Goldrush, and national historic places. The site also features links to educational resources such as teachers' guides to teaching about historic places and culture.

On behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), take this quiz to test your knowledge of the major events of World War II, from Normandy to Nagasaki.

Which events of the first half of the twentieth century had the greatest impact on shaping national identity between 1890 and 1945? In this video, Kim compares the effect of major developments like the Great Depression and World II on American core beliefs about individualism, culture, and the proper US role in the world.

In this video, filmed thirty miles off the coast of North Carolina, there is a shipwreck on the bottom, 130 feet down. Swarming around the wreck are dozens of Sand Tiger sharks. They look menacing, but they seem to be very docile. What are they all doing there, in one spot? That's what Jonathan wants to find out. Using a variety of filming techniques, Jonathan attempts to discover the secrets of the Sand Tiger shark gatherings at the wrecks, and does the first ever night dive with these shark..talk about scary! Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.