First, we watched a video to help us answer the following questions: How violent are we? + How obedient are we? The film was about an experiment ("The Milgram Studies") during which participants asked another participant questions, and then gave them and electric shock whenever they got an answer wrong. Each time they got an answer wrong, they were told to shock them with a higher voltage. The highest voltage was a lethal 450 volts. What do you think the people did? I'm sure you'll find the results "shocking." (hardy har har) We discussed the results of the study and applied it to the behavior of people during WWII in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Second, we learned about Japan's involvement in WWII. Japan began to imperialize Asia and eventually wanted to take over the world. We watched a video in which we learned about the "Rape of Nanking" ...during which the Japanese "surprise-invaded" China and cruelly murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians... torturing and brutally killing elderly, women, children, babies, etc. You can watch these clips below.
If you would like to hear about the fate of the "Comfort Women" that the Japanese used during this time, you can see an interview with one today who now lives in San Francisco, CA. Here is her story below:
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WEDNESDAY - MAY 12, 2010
Hey Guys! Today we answered 5 questions about the movie we watched (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) and discussed what we learned about Germans living in Nazi Germany during WWII. Many of us in class found that Germans were actually not all Nazis, nor were they "for" the Holocaust and Hitler's Final Solution. Some of the Germans were happy to see the Jews and other "undesireables" go away, but they were upset about the killings. And some Germans were cruel and inhuman in their treatment of Jews and others during the Final Solution. Mr. Kameika also showed some slides and told stories about Nazis, concentration camps, einsatzgruppen "death squads," and other aspects of Nazism in Germany.
