Lesson 13

Lesson: Three Fronts (Part 3)

Objective: Students will be able to describe the war with Japan in the Pacific. They will be
familiar with the Battle of Midway, which was the turning point of the war in the Pacific,
and will be familiar with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan to end the war, the
effects it had, and our reasons for doing so. Students will begin to form their opinions on
whether or not we were justified in dropping the bombs.
Common Core Standards:
10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources,
attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
10.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide
an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
10.3 Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier
events caused later ones or simply preceded them.
Materials: Tablets, blogs, computer, SmartBoard, YouTube
Directions: Students get their tablets out and access their blogs for notes. Tell them that
now that Hitler was dead and the Germans had surrendered, it was time to turn our full
attention to the Japanese and defeat them in the Pacific.
Present the last part of the Three Fronts lecture, beginning after Germany surrenders. It
talks about the Battle of Midway, which ended up being the turning point in the war in the
Pacific, though it still took three more years to defeat Japan, in part because the U.S. was
focused on Germany in Europe at the time.
The lecture also talks about the Battle of Iwo Jima, an island the U.S. needed to take in order
to launch an invasion of Japan. Its important to point out that nearly every single one of
the 22,000 Japanese soldiers defending the island perished rather than surrender. Even
after defeat, some of the soldiers fled and lived in caves. The last one finally surrendered in
1948, three years after the war was over. Its important to teach this because it shows the
Japanese honor code, that it was unacceptable to surrender, because this plays into the
decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan soon after.
Last, the lecture talks about the decision President Truman made to use Atomic bombs
against Japan. Estimates vary, but well over 100,000 people died as a result of the
dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with tens of thousands more injured.
The presentation briefly goes through both sides of the atomic bomb debate.
Show the YouTube video on the dropping of the atomic bombs. Tell students that
tomorrow theyll study it more in depth and ultimately have a debate on whether the U.S.
was justified in using the weapons.