Native Americans and Today

Flags of our fathers book Portfolio

In the book Flags of our fathers by James Bradley the theme is heroism is extracting the pain from one person for the good of many. This theme relates to history when the leaders of the civil rights movement took it upon themselves to be the first to endure the hardships of the African American oppression. The role of perspective in Flags of our fathers is personal because the narrator is telling the story of each character and what they went through.

Being a real hero is taking the pain upon yourself so others don't have to experience the same thing. This is shown when Doc is shot in both legs and the foot and is still taking care of other soldier's when he needs medical attention as well. When Ira,Franklin,Jack, Harlon, Mike, and Rene climbed to the top of the volcano in Japan and planted the first American flag on Japanese soil. This is important because they went through danger and as a team and shot down the Japanese snipers. Lastly this theme is shown with all of the soldiers who fought during World War II. All of these soldiers who fought in the war had to push through their own dead while fighting the enemy on the D-Day beaches. The significance of the theme in this book is to show that being a hero takes a lot out of a person and causes a lot of pain on the inside that most people don't see.

The civil rights movement was banning racial discrimination of African Americans and giving them their rightful place in the southern states. The theme is shown first when Rosa Parks doesn't move to the back of the bus when a white man tells her to. This is shown again when Martin Luther King Jr. goes out into the public and rallies them together by his motto "Judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin." The third person who shows this is Brown vs the board of education. It was where he went against the board and fought for the consolidation of blacks and whites going to school all together. This theme is important because he stood up for what the kids couldn't say. These three people took the initiative and stood up for the untouched issues they knew would cause them pain and heartache, so that their peers didn't have to endure the same things they went through.

You know someone is a real hero when they don't believe that they are a hero, because their experiences caused them so much pain and suffering and don't see how they could help others. The civil rights movement was important so that all African Americans could have all the freedom they have today and not be segregated as they once were. The role of perspective in this theme is personal because you see the individual stories of each character and how the trials and tribulations they went through strongly affected their lives. We all have heroes in our lives but we don't realize the pain and the suffering that our heroes went through to become who they are.

The Bomb

Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." ....
The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. wow thats a lot of lives in one night. -Julianna DeNicola 5/30/09 9:47 PM And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning could you imagine all of the innocent people dying. why such durastic measures? -Julianna DeNicola 5/30/09 9:48 PM . Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.
The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:

The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.
Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. If this is the case then why did Russia get involved and we kill thousands of innocent people if Japan would have surrendered? -Julianna DeNicola 5/30/09 9:52 PM

But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion."
If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan?
The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in."
Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." Thats awful, i bet they new that there were mostly civilians there when they dropped the bomb. -Julianna DeNicola 5/30/09 9:56 PM
The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:

Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply.

The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged."
True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.

Julianna D - American Empire

 

 

American Empire

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....

There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:

Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help.
       I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also.
       I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came:
       1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable.
       2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable.
       3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and
       4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly.

       The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected.
       It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease.
       The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . .
       The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . .
       No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . .
       I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .
       My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.  
       It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

       The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. After the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents.
       In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. That is a lot of people who was there there? were there just important people or everyone? -Julianna DeNicola 5/7/09 9:04 AM McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus."
       William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns."
       James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles."
       The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire."
       A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces."
       It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. Why did we not like negros and why were we killing them off? -Julianna DeNicola 5/7/09 9:17 AM The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility.
       In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:

The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.  Our Army is very cruel, why shoot someone when they're surrendering? would you want to be killed after you surrender? -Julianna DeNicola 5/7/09 9:35 AM

       Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:

One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures.

       Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed."
       In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:

The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten."

In the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease.
       Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.
       And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power.

       American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks. A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war.
       For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."

Teddy Rosevelt Slideshow

Weekly Reflection #1

So last week we had class twice last week Tue and Thur. Tuesday we talked about the soldiers and watched the movie thin red line. I really liked that movie and the assignment we did commenting and saying what we thought about their experiences, what we would have done differently or done the same. It helped me get a sense of what they went through and maybe why they did what they did. I wasn't there on Thursday and you talked about VJ Day and did some assignment, I'm not really sure. It is hard to miss your class because most of the class is lecturing and yeah Mr. Viles can give us an overview but its not the same. What if you could do a podcast or make it so we can watch it from home if your sick or something. Not that i have an ipod... Well that's what i have to say for this week thanks.

Book Portfolio Qtr 3

The Art of the Lathe by B.H Fairchild is a book of poems talking of the portrayal of Americans. The theme in this book is what does it take for "regular" people to accept who we are in the face of an American Ideal. The theme in history is shown how we've developed a work ethic, family values and freedom. There is a personal role of perspective in this book. Fairchild expresses his feelings about how everyone is wrong in what they see in the ideal American and why they're wrong.

The theme in the book The Art of the Lathe is, how can people accept and live as the "typical" American. Different people have different ways of accepting and feeling like they're apart of something bigger some people sing. When your singing in a choir and all of your voices are blending and your moving to the beat of the music, for those minutes how ever long, its not just you alone in the world your anonymous and you get this rush. For others it may be playing a sport, becoming the best you can be working with your teammates to defeat other at and show what your good at. This theme is important because it shows how people then and now accept who they are and live their lives.

When the British left England to get away from the king and become free this is important because from there we developed as what we know in America as family values, work ethic and education. When the British came to Massachusetts they had to build their colonies from the ground up and this took dedication and work. The only people "living" in America at the time were Native Americans and as a Native American you work as a tribe to survive. The education piece comes from the British and their reasons for teaching was learning to read so you could read the bible and have a strong foundation and faith in Jesus Christ. Later on we see whites not teaching their slaves any education so they could control them, but the slaves wanted that freedom and didn't take no for an answer. All of this is important because America is known for education, freedom, family and their work ethic and with out those people and events we wouldn't have what we have today.

Role of perspective relates to the theme because Fairchild was one of those "regular" peoples. This is shown during the poem Hoppers painting. Hopper painted regular people doing regular things for example a sewing at the sewing machine. The light he adds is warming and makes the job seem delightful, when in actuality Fairchild is saying no that's not not true I was there and that's not how it is. The same kind of thing is shown during the invisible man where as a little boys they're watching a movie and imaging life. As the man grows older he imagines what it would be like to be rich and have all the luxuries. You can associate this when you come out of the theater, your eyes are fuzzy from the change of light and you stretch America is in that movie theater waiting and when the next big thing happens that we're "suppose" to follow we act like we're coming out from the movies. This perspective is important because you only have this perspective if you've been there and Fairchild has.

The theme once again for this book is how do people accept who they are and continue to live life. All of the events that took place in America starting with the British, is important because it gave us a name that we continue to live up to every day. The role of perspective is personal and it's so strong because you can only relate to something if you've gone through it and in this instance Fairchild did and could make a connection. This is important because it can help Americans now shape us into who we are and who we're going to become.

Jen's Solidier Story

It seemed like it was raining all the time. We also had to cross many rivers. I would hate crossing rivers I hate crawfish, they just freak me out -jennifer parker 3/31/09 11:02 AM... I agree but if i did cross i would probably run. -Julianna DeNicola 4/1/09 2:28 PMWe had to climb a steep ridgeline dividing the Lunga and Tenaru valleys using ropes that we each carried and then linked together. We found an artillery piece that had been shelling Henderson Field. It was nicknamed "Pistol Pete." Several men took it apart and threw it over a cliff.
We came upon a Japanese field hospital and bivouac area. We killed a lot of Japs. I finally understand what a jap is now. In my story thats what they were called and it didn't click. -Julianna DeNicola 4/1/09 2:29 PMWe bayoneted and shot anything that was still moving.
This reminds me of a packet we had to read for homework in Military history. It was about the Philipeans and the U.S. soldiers said that they killed anything that was moving. -jennifer parker 3/31/09 11:06 AM It was a series of grass huts. They were on the ground wounded. Several had broken legs. It didn't look like they had proper medical attention, because some were bent on a 45-degree angle. They weren't sticking straight out. We were back in Japanese territory and didn't want to make noise, so we used bayonets. I was pretty angry. We had a patrol, and they captured one of our men and tied him over a log and used him as a woman. They rammed a bayonet up his butt and he bled to death. I think thats just a little too far, thats sooo nasty! -jennifer
Aww thats awful! -Julianna DeNicola 4/1/09 2:30 PMparker 3/31/09 11:10 AM
That made me angry! So whenever I'd get into action, I'd get angry. I wasn't afraid when I was angry. We all felt that way after what we had seen.
After we left the area, we went up around Mount Austen. They ambushed us on the top. We had one man wounded. We carried him out; it was a long way down the mountain. We had jungle rot on our crotch and down our legs so bad that we had to stop every once in a while to empty the blood out of our shoes. Nasty. I really dont want to go into the miitary from rading this about jungle rot -jennifer parker 3/31/09 11:12 AM It was painful. When you're in the field like that, you go, and you can't worry about pain.
The Raiders were a very special group. They're all volunteers. They were very select. We were interviewed by Evans Carlson or Jimmy Roosevelt. Roosevelt interviewed me and asked me if I was afraid to die. I said, "Anybody not afraid to die is a fool. But I would if it came to that. I wouldn't hesitate." He passed me.

Solider Story

TOM LYONS, 1st Parachute BattalionConverted for the Web from "Into The Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat" by Patrick K. O'Donnell

Outnumbered and running out of ammunition, Edson's three hundred defenders faced their gravest threat when a large element of the Japanese III Battalion, 124th Infantry seemed poised to overrun the left side of the knoll. Edson ordered the Marine parachutists holding that side of the knoll to counterattack immediately. But the parachute battalion's commanding officer was nowhere to be found. He was relieved on the spot by Edson, and Captain Harry Torgerson was placed in command. Torgerson assembled two companies of parachutists and launched them in a desperate counterattack, saving the left flank of the line. After the Marines regained the line, the fighting became hand-to-hand, as parachutist Tom Lyons vividly remembers.

When they started raking us with a machine gun, that pissed me off, I would probably be angry aswell as scared at the same time. -Julianna DeNicola 3/31/09 11:14 AM so I got up and crawled through the grass. The grass was about a foot and a half tall off the side of that hill, and I crawled up and around to the side of the machine gun. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the grass was high enough that it would partially hide you. I got almost to the machine gun before I was detected. They didn't see me until I stood up. There were so many people running around you couldn't shoot anybody. I stood up and threw a hand grenade, and just as I threw the grenade, they swung the gun around and ripped me up through the middle. I took several bullets; most of them went all the way through, and one missed my heart by about a half an inch. It knocked me ass over tin cup down the hill. The first one stung like hell. It really hurt. But the others after that didn't hurt at all. It seemed like I just left my body and was floating up in the air looking down at everything going on.
I saw a Jap come out, and he stepped on my stomach and he stabbed me in the throat with his bayonet. It went through the side of my neck and into the ground behind me but it didn't hurt. Jesse Youngdeer [Robert Youngdeer's brother] was coming up the trail with a box of hand grenades, and this Jap stepped off me and instead of finishing me off, he made a thrust at Youngdeer. [Youngdeer] stopped it with the box of hand grenades, and then he grabbed the Jap's rifle and was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. The Jap had stabbed him just above the knee. Another Marine ran up with his bayonet, and he tried to stab the Jap, and he got confused and stabbed Youngdeer right in the leg.
My eyes were wide open. I could see everything that was going on. I thought I was seeing it from fifty feet above. When they started firing the 105s [artillery] right in my area, I got some shrapnel in the right side of my chest. The bullets and shells were passing right over where I was floating around up there, and I was afraid they were going to hit me.
Morning came, and they came around, and all the Japs were gone. There were dead Japs all around me.
I probably wouldn't have made it through the night. I don't know if I would be strong enough. -Julianna DeNicola 3/31/09 11:20 AMThey were picking out the Marines and throwing all the bodies on a truck, and they cut all our dog tags off.
If I were alive I probably would have tried to let them know that I was in fact alive. -Julianna DeNicola 3/31/09 11:34 AMThey hauled us down to the cemetery in the coconut grove, and they dumped our bodies out. I ended up at the top of the pile. The driver came around close to the tailgate and thought I was coming alive, so he started running into the jungle screaming, and he didn't come back.
An hour or so later, two corpsmen came by in a jeep, and they put me on a stretcher and hauled me to the hospital. They put me under a palm tree. From the stretcher, doctors told them to take this one out and bring in someone they can save. So I was there under a palm tree, and fresh troops started coming up the road. A ship came in with reinforcements, and an officer came over and said, "Take all the people out of the field hospital and put them on my ship and I'll take them back to Buttons [Base Buttons in Esp�ritu Santo]." And he said, "And that one under the palm tree, put him in my cabin and call the ship surgeon." He said, "You're going to be on the bridge all the way back to Buttons." I was conscious but couldn't talk. My mouth was full of caked blood. I was wearing the same clothes for almost two months.
This ship surgeon got my lung uncollapsed, and he pumped all the blood out of it and had me all cleaned up. After we made port, they put me on a plane to New Zealand. My mother got a check from my insurance saying I was dead the same day she got a letter from me written by a nurse at hospital in New Zealand.

Reagan Questions

1. What are the problems that America faces? Unemployment, Recession

2. What are Reagan's solutions? Ending inflation, Putting,Americans back to work

3.What makes Reagan effective here? He uses humor and makes fun of the other party.

4. What does this reveal about Reagan? He's a quick thinker and uses more than on technique go relate to people.

5.What policy decisions might Reagan make according to this? He would make peace and negotiate until America wins.

6. How did this event effect Reagan's role with the American public? It shows that in America if something happens to one of our kind, we're gonna rise above and help them.

7 .Who is the audience for this speech? Civilians of America

8. What is the argument Reagan makes here?

9. What do you think Reagan's agenda is in this speech? To show that communism isn't ok and give a touching example to show how it affects people

10. What is the message here? That America has progressed since Reagan has come into office

11. How does the ad use carter? Reagan has created more jobs then President Carter did

12. What does the ad suggest about the character/morals of the country? That America is progressing to be the best we can be, our morals and standards have grown and changed.

13. What is the criticism of communism being offered here? That it doesn't work, so America won't go for it and the Soviets shouldn't either

14. Do you think this was an effective speech? yes

15. Who is the audience for this broadcast? American people, any other countries standing behind the U.S

16. What do you think the American people thought of this action and Reagan's explanation of it?Both America and Reagan thought that he was doing the right. America showed who was boss.

Brady Bunch

In this short clip of the Brady bunch, Martha was reading the dear Libby column in the newspaper, when she comes to a specific story she stops reading. Later when her parents are looking for that page in the paper to keep reading their stories and can't find it the father goes out to get a new one. Martha offers to go and her Greg has to go with her, when they're outside she shows him the article. The article is about a person who got divorced and has three new kids, he/she wants to know if she should pretend to "love" the kids until they destroy their marriage or what. The kids think that this article is about them because they come from broken homes and their parents got remarried. In the 70's you start to see more and more women's rights, if women can get jobs and still support their families and they didn't like their marriage then they were more than likely going to get out, where as in the 50's women really didn't have a choice becauese they didn't have a very good education

Nixon resignation

I want to know eactly why Nixon resigned?

I think Nixon resigned because there may have been a chance of him getting impeached because of the watergate incident. Thomson said that he was always a fighter and always fought everything so why not an impeachment? Nixon knew that he wouln't win so why spend all of your time and energy fighting in you know your not going to win.

Link to Washington post article that explains why Nixon resigned.

Qt 2 Book Portfolio ( What work is)

What Work Is by Phillip Levine is a book about working "back then" and they type of work that people did and the attitudes they did their work with. The theme for the book What Work Is is being around people who share the same struggles and burdens as you and keep going even though its hard. African Americans were subjected to slavery but with being around people who were going through the same thing made it easier to cope with. This theme applies to my personal life as well because there are some classes that are mandatory for me to take so I can graduate high school and haven't liked them, but having friends in those classes helped me enjoy the class a little more and stick with it.



Going to work or school is hard if you don't like it for what ever the reason. If you have people around who don't like what you are doing either, but do it because maybe that's what expected of them, it makes it easier to go to your work place or activity. For example the boy or man in the poem Every Blessed Day the sun works at a car factory. He doesn't like his job but he does it because that's what his father did and it's expected of him to do the same thing. In the poem Gin these boys are only 14 going 15 and they are drinking to make the pain go away this isn't the right thing to do, but together they are going through the same things. In these poems everyone is around people who are going through the same things and that makes the situation easier to deal with. This is important and you see all through the poems how people lean on each other when they understand what each other are going through.

All through you education career starting from a young age you learn about African Americans and how they weren't always free, Harriet Tubman was the leader of the underground railroad. This was where many black slaves escaped slavery and became free. If Harriet Tubman hadn't been brave enough to relate to the people around her, then blacks could still be slaves today. The Civil Rights movements were made to make laws equal for both blacks and white. During the Holocaust the Jews had to stick together because they were being ized in concentration camps by the Germans. In all of these different cases the same all people were going through the same things, this is important because it shows that through history people have talked and expresses their feelings to each other to help deal with the situation they were facing.

When someone is going through something difficult and someone tries to help people resent that if they don't understand because they have been through the same experience. I have diabetes and when my family gets on me about it, I start to get an attitude and resent them because they don't understand what i go through and how it affects my life. I do have a friend who has diabetes and we keep each other in check saying don't eat that it's not healthy, i don't resent her for it because she understands what I go through on a daily basis. I have a friend whose parents are getting a divorce and it's has been hard on him. I want to help but i don't know how because my parents aren't divorced. It just proves and shows that it's easier to cope with the daily things we go through if we have people around us who are going through the same things.

Being around people who understand your needs and what your going through is the theme of the book What Work Is. This theme is significant in history during the holocaust when the Jews had to stick together so that even a small fraction of them could survive and live to tell their story. The role of perspective in this theme is that it's easier to talk to someone who knows what your going through rather then someone who doesn't understand. This theme is very important because without people being able to share their burdens with like people America wouldn't be where we are today. Everyone would be resentful and nothing would get accomplished, for example Slavey maybe wouldn't have ended.

LBJ Law Review

The US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program akso known as the food stamps is a program that helps families with low or no income buy food. This program is run by the U.S department of Agriculture. Individual states handed out food stamps that were worth 1,5, and ten dollar, participants are allowed to buy pre-packaged foods (nutruitional value doesn't matter) In the late 1990's the program was reshaped and food stamps were out and a new thing called elecetronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards were the new thing. This new thing was just like a debit card .Individuals use the card when they go shopping instead of using the traditional paper stamps that are worth an individual amount. In september 2o08 the food stamp program was at an all high about 31.5 million were on government assistance. This was the highest amound of people that have ever been assisted since the program started in 1962.

I think that the food stamp program is a good idea for low income families or families that don't have any money at all, everyone needs to eat and with out the program a lot of families may go hungry. I personally think that people who don't have an income should have to show proof of trying to get a job ex: showing proof they had an interview.