History According to Hutton

Reflection

Monday, January 23, 2006

War Without Mercy

War Without Mercy brought up a lot of things that I never thought about when studying or teaching WWII. I never really thought of WWII being a race war. I knew the Holocaust happened during WWII, but I always thought of it as a terrible side note. I really found it interesting when the book mentioned that the Axis, especially Japan, exposed the hypocrisy of the Jim Crow era as propaganda against the U.S. In fact, I never really put it together that there was hypocrisy—but now I see it.

Another thing that I never realized was that Japan didn’t invade independent countries. They invaded countries that had been western colonial areas. That does put Japanese aggression into a different perspective.

The websites for Japanese internment were very good. However, I had previously visited many of them preparing for past lessons. There were a few that were new and I was amazed at the amount of information available.

These new revelations will change the way I teach WWII. I will definitely try to make both World and American history students view the war from a different point-of-view. I may begin with having them look at America through the Japanese lens and also look at the problems Japan faced at the time.