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#703 Homefront and Japanese Internment

4/7/2017

WWII homefront overview (Google Slides)

Examine the timeline (PDF) and review the major events.

Based on your reading of the timeline, decide with a partner on a hypothesis for why Japanese Americans were interned during World War II.

Watch the following film on the newsreel footage produced by the U.S. government sometime in the middle of 1942. The goal of the film is to explain the reasons and strategies for interning Japanese Americans.

Questions:

What were some of the reasons for internment offered in the newsreel?
How does the newsreel portray internment? Is portrayed as positive or
negative?
Who do you think the audience was for this newsreel?
With your partner, reconsider your hypothesis. Has this film shifted your view on why internment occurred?

Read selections of the majority opinion in the Korematsu v. United States ruling on pages 121-23 of the Course Reader.

Consider:

What competing goals is the Supreme Court weighing in its decision? How does it ultimately weigh these goals to form its decision?
Does the logic presented here resonate with you? Why or why not?

Finally, read selections from Justice Black’s dissent on page 125-26 of the Course Reader.

Consider:

What competing goals is Justice Black weighing in his dissent? How does he ultimately weigh these goals to form his decision?
Compare the reasoning here with that presented the Supreme Court majority. Which view do you find more persuasive? Why?

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#702 World War II: U.S. entry into World War II and Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"

4/5/2017

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Today's goals:

Examine the immediate context in the period leading up to U.S. entry into World War II.
Draw connections between our previous discussions of the New Deal and the “authoritarian alternatives.”
Understand the importance of the “Four Freedoms” address in the context of this debate.

Part I: Debating U.S. entry into World War II

Examine this selection of primary source documents (Google Doc) that highlight different dimensions of the debate on entry into World War II from the late 1930s through December 1941. In teams of 3-4, identify:

Which documents support which side of the debate over U.S. entry into World War II.
Use these to identify the key arguments for and against U.S. entry into World War II in the years before the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Primary Sources (Google Doc)

Part II: The Four Freedoms

Questions for guided discussion:

What do you think President Roosevelt is aiming to accomplish by delivering this speech?
What does he ask from Congress? Why does he need to ask this of Congress?
What specific policy actions does he propose? Do you view these actions as consistent with the neutral status that the United States had adopted at the time?
Closely examine the Four Freedoms by analyzing the text of the speech together with the paintings by Norman Rockwell created in 1943 (note that the text above and below each image was not part of his original work). As we examine these Four Freedoms, consider how these are both similar and different from the Bill of Rights we examined at the beginning of the year.

Time permitting, watch the following clip from Frank Capra's "Prelude to War," produced by the American Office of War and Information in 1942 (4:00-11:30). As you watch, follow how he incorporates the Four Freedoms into his narrative.

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#701 Comparing Jewish refugees of the 1930s with Syrian refugees today

4/3/2017

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The German liner St. Louis, carrying about 900 German Jewish refugees, was denied entrance to the Havana harbor in 1939. The ship was later denied entrance to the United States and returned to Hamburg, Germany. Associated Press via The New York Times.

Police officers on Sept. 4 guarded a so-called reception center for migrants in Roszke, Hungary. Some migrants were tricked into boarding trains for such camps. Reuters via The New York Times.

Key questions:

What are similarities and differences between the refugee crises of the 1930s and today?
How might examining the history of refugees in the 1930s inform the choices that individuals and governments make in responding to refugees today?

Background:

Today’s lesson brings together two episodes: the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s and the existence today of more than 65 million displaced people worldwide — the highest number on record since the United Nations Refugee Agency began collecting statistics.
The 1930s:
- Troubles for European Jews began with the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany in 1933.
- The year 1938 was a moment of crisis:
  - The German annexation of Austria (in March) and the Czech Sudetenland (in September) increased the number of people affected by Nazi restrictions, while at the same time those restrictions intensified to the point that Jews, political dissidents and others were effectively removed from German public life and denied rights, employment and education.
  - In November 1938, Kristallnacht (“the night of broken glass”) pogrom targeted Jewish communities throughout the Nazi Reich.
  - Shortly after Kristallnacht, a poll in the United States found that 94 percent of Americans disapproved of Nazi treatment of Jews, but 72 percent still objected to admitting large numbers of Jews.

Map showing Nazi expansion to 1939.

Jewish shops destroyed in Kristallnacht, November 1938.

Today:

Multiple humanitarian crises have arisen around the world, with the greatest concentration centered on the Middle East, particularly the parts of Syria and Iraq impacted by civil war and warfare with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Europe faces a humanitarian crisis, with thousands of people fleeing conflicts in Syria and around the Middle East and Africa arriving in Greece, Hungary, Germany and other countries each month.
A little more than 18,000 Syrian refugees were settled in the United States under the Obama administration, including one family here in Salisbury. The Trump administration intends to sharply reduce that figure.

Questions for discussion:

How does Daniel Victor’s article compare responses to Jewish refugees in the 1930s with responses to Syrian refugees today? What are some of the key similarities and differences? How do ideas about race and religion shape attitudes to refugees in each example? What other factors play a role?

How does the film clip from “Defying the Nazis” connect to Mr. Victor’s article? How does it extend your thinking about the lives of refugees and the fears, hopes and challenges they have experienced? How does it add to your understanding of United States’ policies and attitudes toward refugees in the 1930s?

The historian Peter Shulman, interviewed in the article, argued that there are “enough similarities between Jewish refugees in the 1930s and Syrian refugees today to draw a ‘moral connection’ between the two situations.” Do you agree with Mr. Shulman? Why or why not? If yes, how would you describe this “moral connection?”

What dilemmas did Martha and Waitstill Sharp face in their decision to leave home and help refugees in Europe? What risks did they take? What do you think motivated them to make a choice to help refugees when that was so at odds with American public opinion and national policy?

Many who connect the refugee crisis of the 1930s to the plight of Syrian refugees today emphasize the failure of the United States and other countries to help. The Sharps’s story, in contrast, is about a small group of private citizens banding together to aid refugees. Is their history relevant to the current refugee crisis? How might a story of people who chose to help then inform decision-making about the refugee crisis today?

Samantha Power argues in favor of learning the “lessons of history.” In one New York Times article, a Human Rights Watch staff member argued, “We all say we have learned the lessons of history, but to be turning away these desperate people who are fleeing a horrific situation suggests that we haven’t learned the lessons at all.” What are the potential benefits of looking for “lessons” in history? What might be some of the challenges or drawbacks? Why is it so difficult to learn and apply the “lessons of history?”

The two images below were placed side by side atop a newspaper column written by Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times with the caption "Anne Frank, left. At right, Rouwaida Hanoun, a Syrian 5-year-old who was wounded during an airstrike on Aleppo last week." What do you think Kristoff was hoping to communicate by placing these two images side by side? Do you agree with the newspaper's decision to publish them together? Why or why not?

What concerns does Donald Trump have about letting in refugees from predominantly Muslim countries today? How are these concerns like – and unlike – the concerns felt by Americans in the 1930s and 1940s about Jewish refugees seeking to enter the United States?

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#703 Homefront and Japanese Internment

#702 World War II: ​U.S. entry into World War II and Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"

#701 Comparing Jewish refugees of the 1930s with Syrian refugees today

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#702 World War II: U.S. entry into World War II and Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"