Focus

This lesson is part of a unit on World War II and follows lessons about Pearl Harbor and the end of the war in Europe. Students will interpret excerpts from a primary source document and organize information about key battles in the Pacific in a graphic organizer. This lesson also serves as a bridge to a discussion about the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan.

Vital Theme and Narrative

Conflict and cooperation.

Habit of Mind

Perceive past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as opposed to present-mindedness.

Objectives

1) Read and interpret a first-hand account from an American soldier fighting in the Pacific campaign.
2) Working cooperatively, create a graphic organizer with information about key battles in the Pacific campaign.
3) Predict the likely outcome of an American invasion of Japan.

Procedure

Introduction
Have students read excerpt from With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. Ask students what this excerpt tells them about the war in the Pacific.

Activity
Direct students to make a chart in their notebooks with the title War in the Pacific and five columns: Battle, Date(s), Victor, Casualties, and Significance. Divide class into six groups for jigsaw activity. Assign each group a major Pacific War battle (Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa). Have each group use their textbooks to find information about their battle, then jigsaw the groups.

Assessment
Respond to the following writing prompt:
Based on your knowledge of the war in the Pacific, predict what an American invasion of Japan would be like. Make your prediction in the form of a letter to the new president, Harry Truman, describing the war so far and explaining to him what an invasion of Japan would be like.

Grant Phillipp

The War in the Pacific: One Soldier's Account

Under my first barrage since the fast-moving events of hitting the beach, I learned a new sensation: utter and absolute helplessness. The shelling lifted in about half an hour, although it seemed to me to have crashed on for hours. Time had no meaning to me …Orders then came to move out and I got up, covered by a layer of coral dust. I felt like jelly and couldn't believe any of us had survived that barrage (63).

The sun bore down unmercifully, and the heat was exhausting. Smoke and dust from the barrage limited my vision. The ground seemed to sway back and forth under the concussions. I felt as though I were floating along in the vortex of some unreal thunderstorms. Japanese bullets snapped and cracked, and tracers went by me on both sides at waist height. This deadly small-arms fire seemed almost insignificant amid the erupting shells. Explosions and the hum and the growl of shell fragments shredded the air. Chunks of blasted coral stung my face and hands while steel fragments spattered down on the hard rock like hail on a city street. Everywhere shells flashed like giant firecrackers (79).

Even the stoic Japanese couldn't suppress the agony of death by fire and suffocation. But they were no more likely to surrender to us than we would have been to them had we ever been confronted with the possibility of surrender. In fighting the Japanese, surrender was not one of our options (118).

Total American casualties were 7,613 killed and missing and 31, 807 wounded in action …Japanese casualty figures are hazy. However, 107,539 enemy dead were counted on Okinawa. Approximately 10,000 enemy troops surrendered, and about 20,000 were either sealed in caves or buried by the Japanese themselves. Even lacking an exact accounting, in the final analysis the enemy garrison was, with rare exceptions, annihilated (311-312).

Sledge, E.B. With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.