Honoring heroes: Armed Forces Day 2007

May 19, 2007

1951 poster for Armed Forces Day

May 19, 2007, is Armed Forces Day. Fly your U.S. and state flags today.

Great Irony: The Defense Department website for Armed Forces Day is not exactly up to date, and suffers from lack of attention (just try to find events in your area from the page set up to do just that).

Which only makes the point: We have to support our troops — heaven knows the current government isn’t going to. Write a letter to the troops; join an event run by your local American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars — or an event to support the troops in a way the American Legion and VFW don’t support, but which is okay, too. Fly your flag. Do the right thing to honor those we send into harm’s way, for little pay and not enough thanks. (That site is much better maintained than the Armed Forces Day site.)

History stuff for classrooms, below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Ethics, Flag etiquette, Freedom - Political, Harry Truman, Heroes, History, Iraq, Patriotism, Presidents, War, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Atomic war “Doomsday Clock” moved two minutes closer to midnight

January 18, 2007

Doomsday clock logo from Bulletin of Atomic ScientistsThe Doomsday Clock on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been ticked ahead two minutes, to show five minutes to midnight — a reflection of how close the world is to destruction by nuclear war.

Except, this time it’s not just nuclear weapons exchanges that figure into the ticking of the Doomsday timepiece: Climatic change is also considered.

“Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has the world faced such perilous choices,” she [executive director Kennette Benedict] said. “North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia, are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by some the most destructive technology on Earth.”

She said this time, nuclear annihilation is not the scientists’ only concern.

“The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons,” she added. “The effects may be less dramatic in the short term, than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades, climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.”

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Cold War, Harry Truman, Nuclear weapons, Peace, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History in video: Japan’s surrender, 62 years ago

September 3, 2006

I had looked before without success, but not since early this year. Looking for something else, I found this link to videos at the National Archives, available for downloading.

This is a 9-minute newsreel on the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, for one example, aboard the U.S.S. Missouri — on September 2, 1945, 62 years ago yesterday.


The National Archives videos promise to be great sources for classroom teachers.

3 Comments | Education, Harry Truman, History, History video sources, Teaching, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Atomic anniversaries

August 7, 2006

This week marks the 61st anniversaries of the U.S. dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).

This is the only event that occasionally causes me to wish for school in early August. Marking the anniversaries in a U.S. history class could be a useful exercise. Texas’ TEKS require students to know a bit about President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb, and especially his reasoning behind the decision. To get there in an orderly fashion, and to keep kids captivated by this most interesting part of recent history, I think a class needs to lay the background with the end of the war in Europe (especially D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge) with troops hoping to go home to the U.S. and being diverted to the Pacific, the background of the U.S.’s “island-hopping” strategy, especially the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the carnage that was required to take the islands, and the background of the Manhattan Project, from Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt through the secret cities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Trinity Project at White Sands, the training of the bombers at Wells Wendover, Nevada, and the World War I service of Harry Truman himself. It’s a fascinating history that, the Texas tests show and my classroom experience confirms, students know very little about.

As with the misinformation on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which I reported earlier today, this history of atom bombs informs us of policy choices available and necessary in our current dealings with North Korea, Iran, Ukraine and Russia, among other nations.

Japanese foundations sponsor trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for U.S. reporters, and there used to be one for high school teachers, too. It’s a history I lived with for a decade trying to get a compensation bill for downwind victims of fallout from our atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada. I wish more people knew the stories.

5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Curricula, Harry Truman, History, Nuclear weapons, Science, TAKS, Technology, TEKS, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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