The Price of Freedom:
Teaching about Hiroshima

 

 

Hiroshima Resources

These resources have been compiled by our intern Yolanda Ceiters to accompany the Price of Freedom program developed by the World Affairs Council in 2005 in conjunction with a Washington State Civil Liberties Public Education grant for a workshop on April 27, 2005 at Everett Community College. See Calendar Entry.


Books

Hiroshima, A Novella. Laurence Yep. Scholastic Books. A short story of
the bomb explosion told through the eyes of a student, Sachi. Easy and
quick to read.

Hiroshima: A Tragedy Never to be Repeated. Masamoto Nasu. Fukuinkan
Shoten Publishers. Oversize picture book with beautiful illustrations. The story of the bomb is told simply, but interspersed between sections are pages of historical maps and timelines, and scientific explanations of nuclear power, thermal rays, and radiation.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Eleanor Coerr. This classic is
available in both picture book and chapter book forms. Dell-Yearling
publishes the chapter book. Sadako was two years old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At age 12, she has leukemia and is dying. She attempts to fold 1,000 paper cranes before she dies because a Japanese legend says that doing this will bring her good health. Several of her cranes are on display in the Peace Museum. Today, in Hiroshima Peace Park, there is a memorial to Sadako. Each day thousands of origami cranes from all over the world are placed here, each crane a prayer for peace.


Teaching Resources on the Web

*= recommended

*A-BOMB Wwwmuseum
http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/
The goal of this online “A-Bomb Museum” is to provide information concerning the impact the first atomic bomb had on Hiroshima, and to provide the context for a constructive discussion of what the world can learn from this event and why such weapons of total destruction should never again be used. Many of the museum artifacts are available for viewing on the web page. There are interactive activities for students that can help them feel like they are making a statement about banning the use of nuclear arms.

Ask Asia
http://www.askasia.org/
This site is run by the Asia Society and contains a large amount of information for K-12 levels, including course content on Asia.

Asia For Educators
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/
This general East Asia site focuses mainly on China and Japan. It provides information by subject area (Foreign Policy and Defense, etc.) and by file type (lesson plans, timelines, maps, cartoons, illustrations). It includes some ideas and tools for teaching about Hiroshima.

*Asian Educational Media Service (Aems)
http://www.aems.uiuc.edu/HTML/results.las
AEMS, a service of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies-University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides an annotated, searchable database of audio-visual media materials on Asia. The list contains at least 30 films/documentaries on Hiroshima and nuclear bombing.

Discoveryschool.Com
http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/worldwarII/
Students will research in depth the key events of World War II in the Pacific, and debate whether dropping the nuclear bomb was the best way to end the war.

Hiroshima Links
http://www.dannen.com/hiroshima_links.html
This site includes links to sites on Hiroshima, in particular, on sites related to the atomic bombing.

*National Clearinghouse For U.S-Japan Studies
http://www.indiana.edu/~japan/teachers.html
The Clearinghouse provides a wide variety of resources (including more than 50 full-text lesson plans) for teachers that provide general information about Japanese society, culture, educational systems, and U.S.-Japan relations. The site contains extensive educational resources on the topic of Hiroshima.

*Nuclearfiles.Org
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/edstudyguides/drop.html
This website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is devoted to the history of the Nuclear Age. It is an excellent educational resource exploring the political, legal and ethical challenges stemming from the continued existence of nuclear weapons. It offers syllabi and study guides for secondary and higher education, providing background information, analysis, access to primary documents, pictures, testimonies, etc.

Outreachworld
http://www.outreachworld.org/resource.asp?curriculumid=259
This Lesson Plan focuses on the atomic bombs of WWII helping students gain insight into what happened in Japan on the day of and after the dropping of the atomic bombs. Students will learn how the atomic bomb affected the people of Japan and explore the reasons the U.S. decided to drop the bombs and how they chose their targets.

Pro Teacher
http://www.proteacher.com/prosearch/search2.cgi?c=nil&s=atomic+bomb&n=1
This site includes various Lesson Plans related to the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwii/index.htm
An informative website with pictures, primary source documents, and articles about Ann Frank, Hiroshima, and Pearl Harbor. Scroll to the bottom for Teachers' Guide.

Stanford Project On International And Cross Cultural Education (Spice)
http://spice.stanford.edu/publications/11515/
The module “Hiroshima: Perspectives on the Atomic Bombing” seeks to have students analyze both U.S. and Japanese perspectives of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Students are asked to draw evidence from activities that introduce these multiple perspectives in order to analyze the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan within its historical context.

Teachervision
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/tvsearch.php?keywords=hiroshima&sitesearch=1&in=tv_all
This site offers various tools for teachers, including lesson plans on Hiroshima and the nuclear bombing

The Ethics Of The Bomb
http://lessons.ctaponline.org/~thampton/#resources
In this lesson plan (The Ethics of the Bomb, What Would you do?), students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II and discuss the human costs of the war, with particular attention to civilian and military losses in Japan.

The Manhattan Project
http://history.osu.edu/projects/hti/Lessons/manhattan.htm
The objectives of this lesson include understanding the technological and scientific requirements for making the atomic bomb, the immediate military and political context of dropping the bomb and the national and global implications of the bomb.

Voices Of A-Bomb Survivors
http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/hibakusha.html
This site features interviews with Atomic bomb survivors

Return to Price of Freedom.

 

Last Updated:
4/26/05