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World War Two Term Paper

As many of you are hopefully aware, we have a major paper worth 100 points due Friday, March 6th:

Last Friday the 13th, each student chose a question that they are going to explore. With the question they chose, their paper should demonstrate completeness of the assignment, critical thinking, advanced writing, and a complex understanding of the topic you are writing about.

Requirements:
1. You must use a minimum of six sources for this paper:
-You must use a minimum of two primary resources
-Four scholarly websites, drawn from the school database
-MLA Format

Post-Break Refresher: Naval Warfare in the Pacific.

Attention Students!

I know it's been a while since we've had class, so I'd like to refresh your brains with what we learned the week prior to break. Our main focus was WWII, specifically: America's involvement in the Pacific. This fighting was against the Japanese, who sought recourses in the pacific islands. America wouldn't have any of that. After the successful, yet disputably unsuccessful, attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan gave America a huge reason to join the second World War. In case you were wondering, there is not a lot of ground for cars and soldiers between the west coast of America and Japan. In fact, its almost all water. Because of this, the two countries relied completely on battle at sea. Fortunately, the invention of the Aircraft Carrier allowed for more destructive warfare. These enormous vessels were floating runways equipped with state of the art aircraft, guns, technology, and men. The country with the greatest fleet of aircraft carriers would win the wars in the pacific. The battle of Midway was arguably one of the most devastating loses for the Japanese. Japan had plans to lure America's navy into a trap, and at the same time occupy the island of Mid-Way for its recourses. America saw right through this. An ambush on Japans aircraft carriers would leave Japan's train of thought in ruins. Losing almost all of their aircraft carriers, 300 planes, and 2500 men and officers, Japan was unable to capture Mid-Way and unable to maintain the upper hand on America for the rest of the war. I hope this helps you refresh your mind on what we talked about, this was just a small battle of a larger war that occurred in the Pacific.

Some Articles on Recently Deceased Veterans of WWII

If of interest!

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ken-moore-20141225-story.html

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-leon-kent-20150219-story.html

And this guy is actually from the D-Day Documentary...

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-richard-hottelet-20141218-story.html#page=1

The Atomic Bomb

Today, we finished watching "Victory in the Pacific".  This section of the focused on the final months of the war, when the United States liberated the Phillipines, won at Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hioshima and Nagasaki.  There was much conflict over whether or not the U.S. should have used the atomic bomb.  Some argued that the United States should have had a demonstration of the bomb, giving the Japanese an opportunity to surrender before thousands of civilians died.  This idea was viewed as impractical, and the prospect of a demonstration was shut down.  Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki was bombed 3 days later.  In the documentary, a Japanese veteran was interviewed, and he stated that he was not angry at the United States for using he bomb because he knew that if Germany or Japan had invented it first, they would have used it.  Many people believe that the bomb saved many lives because it meant that the United States would not have to invade Japan, an invasion that would result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of men.  Do you think that the United States was correct in their decision to use their atomic bombs?

"Victory in the Pacific"

Today we continued watching "Victory in the Pacific".  The portion of the documentary we watched today focused on Tarawa and Saipan.  Tarawa was a disaster for the United States Marines.  The military reconnaissance they had gathered was inaccurate, and because of this, when they were landing on the island, it was low tide.  The soldiers had to get out of the boats at a coral reef and wade in chest deep water for a quarter mile to reach the shore.  All while doing this, they were being fired at by machine guns.  Over the course of the battle, 1100 marines died.  The United States learned a hard lesson from Tarawa, that it was imperative that they had detailed plans and extensive, accurate reconnaissance before an invasion.  On the island of Tarawa, there were 5000 Japanese troops.  Out of these 5000, only 17 Japanese were taken prisoner because the rest had either died in combat or committed suicide.  This was another reality shock for the Americans-the Japanese were going to fight to the death or die with dignity rather than being taken prisoner.  At a later battle, taking place on Saipan, only a couple hundred of the 40,000 Japanese inhabitants of the island survived.  This is not all due to the United States marines, civilians and soldiers alike committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs of the island instead of surrendering.  This was a shock to US soldiers, and the Japanese hoped that the suicides of Japanese women, children, men, and soldiers would scare the US enough to have them stop advancing towards Japan.  Do you think that the war would have been different if the Japanese had surrendered instead of committing suicide?

War in the Pacific

Today in class we started watching a movie about the fighting that occurred in the Pacific during World War II.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army took control over the vast majority of the Pacific.  In the Philippines, roughly 70,000 Americans and Filipinos were taken prisoner, forced to march to prison camps.  This march was known as the "March of Death" because the Japanese would torture and kill some of the prisoners because the camps they had were not big enough for all 70,000 people.  Conditions in Japanese prisoner of war camps were far more difficult than German camps.  The Japanese were better than the American soldiers initially because they had more experience in war because of their fight against China, they were better trained, and because of their idea of death before surrender.  This relates back to Samarai codes, and even though everyone fighitng in WWII was fighting until their death, the Japanese took this more seriously because of the honor and dignity that came with dying in battle and the humility and shame that came with surrender.