At a time when Ken Burns’s
“The War” is sparking fresh discussion of America’s
involvement in World War II, educators in five states western
states are building a new curriculum to help chronicle the
conflict and shed new light on one of the nation’s darkest,
and perhaps least heralded, chapters – the internment
of Japanese Americans.
“We want people to look at history from a diverse range
of perspectives and consider its relevance for all Americans
today,” says Allyson Nakamoto, a project director at
the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. “It
is important, of course, for us to learn about the past. But
it is just as important to examine the lessons of the past
and the connections to the current issues surrounding diversity,
civil liberties, and social justice.”
Nakamoto oversees Enduring Communities: The Japanese
American Experience in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas
and Utah, a three-year project that will incorporate
the Japanese American experience into public school history
curricula. The collaboration is funded in part by a 2005 IMLS
National Leadership Grant of $995,325. National Leadership
Grants recognize projects whose concepts can serve as a national
paradigm – in this case, a collaboration of multiple
states working together to build curricula around a shared
concept.
While many Americans often associate the relocation and internment
of some 65,000 Japanese Americans with California and the
West Coast, Enduring Communities focuses on five
states that, together, held 17 “War Relocation Centers”
during World War II. Anchor institutions for the project include
the University of Texas San Antonio’s Institute of Texan
Cultures, Arizona State University’s Asian Pacific American
Studies Program, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the
University of New Mexico, and the Davis School District in
Utah.
Enduring Communities builds on the success of the
Japanese American National Museum’s 2004 project,
Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World
War II Arkansas, which brought the story to classrooms
in Arkansas, home to two internment camps during the war.
The focus: to give students a rarely opened window into local
history as a way of looking at a broader national story.
“We want students to walk away asking questions,”
says Lyn Oshima, Program Coordinator for Secondary Education
in the University of New Mexico’s Department of Teacher
Education. “With the limited space we often have in
textbooks and in curriculums, it’s hard to get a complete
picture…
“We want students to know that communities can choose
to be inclusive or exclusive; that racism and fears about
national security have led us to set policies in the past
that have violated the civil liberties of others; that government
policies do affect people’s lives; that events
in New Mexico very much reflected and affected the rest of
the nation; and that the study of history is much more instructive
when it is infused with a sense of empathy.”
New Mexico holds intricate ties with America’s involvement
in the war, from the development of the atomic bomb at Los
Alamos to being the home to many Navajo code talkers. Towns
around the state, like Clovis, saw their small Japanese American
communities uprooted, while others like Gallup, fought successfully
to keep them intact.
“World War II is very much lived, experienced, and
talked about in this state,” Oshima says.
It is also taught. Through the Enduring Communities
project, five New Mexico schools are piloting programs that
could soon be widely distributed to educators around the state.
Carlos Gilbert Elementary School in Santa Fe, for example, used
additional grant money from the History Channel to produce
an opera about the internment experience. Teachers are integrating
World War II literature specific to New Mexico into their
curriculum. One high school technology teacher, meanwhile,
is having students build collages in themes from photos taken
in internment camps, and later writing essays about them.
“To complete this, they have to know something about
the event…about photography…about the conditions
in which the photos were taken…and about the photographer’s
[agenda],” Oshima says. “This is not a reading
generation. So a challenge is how we can use visuals to teach
history, and use technology to interpret the past.”
Other states are using their own bit of innovation to make
the story come alive for students and still fit into tight
syllabi.
In Utah’s Davis School District, one teacher at Syracuse
Junior High has had students set up an exhibit at a local
museum chronicling the Japanese American experience in Utah
before, during, and after WWII. Another history teacher has
created a website with students (www.hubtours.org/site/Home.html)
that features podcasts of Japanese American oral histories
and will also house a photo album, oral history transcripts,
and lesson plans related to Enduring Communities.
Educators will field test curriculum units for elementary,
middle, and high school classes later this school year, before
looking for wider distribution.
In the meantime, the Japanese American National Museum next
July will host a national conference in Denver, Whose
America? Who’s American? Diversity, Civil Liberties,
and Social Justice, to showcase the work of the students
and teachers, and discuss the continued relevance of the Japanese
American experience. The conference will commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted
redress to thousands of Japanese Americans and issued an official
apology on behalf of the federal government to those affected
by the policy.
“Just as we discovered in the project, Life Interrupted…we
know that young people are interested in and even excited
by history if they understand that it is their history,”
says Irene Hirano, President and CEO of the museum. “Teachers
and students embraced the Japanese American story, as it represents
an unknown chapter of their state’s history.
“As our national conference and the project will emphasize,
these stories are still relevant in terms of civil liberties
and social justice. This is another reason why we believe
that young people will find American history of personal interest
and a part of who they are today.”
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