Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History-WWIIThis site contains an extensive number of primary sources, articles and essays, resources for teachers, multimedia sources, and interactives pertaining to American participation in WWII. Highly valuable for any unit dealing with American history, the sheer number and variety of resources (particularly the interactives) involving WWII provides the instructor with innumerable options and opportunities. Overall, an amazing resource that contains primary sources for multiple eras of history, articles on events broken down by time period, programs, and resources for teachers.
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National Archive
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper and its site houses hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to United States History. The list of WWII resources is extensive and the documents are broken down into a number of categories for easier navigation. Battle plans, casualty lists, photographs, recorded speeches, letters, and a range of various other primary source records can be accessed by students at any time electronically.
The National WWII Museum: Digital Collections
The digital collections feature thousands of pictures and slides from World War II from both the Pacific and European fronts. (Which is highly useful for primary source activities like Living Images.) The site also contains hundreds of oral histories, interviews with men and women who served or experienced the war in varying ways, from a soldier who saw combat on Okinawa to a woman who spent time in a Budapest, Hungary ghetto to a woman who decoded messages about German ship movements.
Densho Archives
The Densho archives house primary sources which document the Japanese American experience from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s with a strong focus on the World War II mass incarceration. The archive divides its sources into two categories, the digital archive and the digital repository, which contain documents, images, and interviews. They provide useful resources to students, teachers, researchers, and the general public for educational purposes.
The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
This page within the overall site contains primary documents pertaining to the internment of the Japanese within San Francisco. It features San Francisco newspapers, executive orders, a timeline of events, evacuation posters, and a number of other publications detailing the forced exile of Japanese-American citizens to camps within the interior.
Primary Source Analysis Tools
Written Document Analysis Worksheet
The Written Document Analysis Tool was created by the National Archives for the purpose of examining various types of written primary sources. This tool breaks down the components of sourcing and contextualizing into manageable chunks, guiding students through a close reading of the source. By separating the individual components of the source out, a student can more easily analyze and respond, as they are no longer overwhelmed by the whole of it.
Instructions:
Step 1:
- To begin, students will examine the type of document, noting unique physical characteristics such as handwritten or interesting letterhead. They will also look for the date or dates of the document, recording those within the worksheet. (Students are focusing on the when, what, and where of the source at this point.)
- Students will next consider the author (the who) and their audience, noting the intended purpose of the document; the why of the source.
- Lastly, students will complete section 6 of the analysis tool, answering the guiding questions. This last section will require quoting from the document and analyzing the language utilized as well as the overall messages and evidence provided. Students will be delving deeper into the "why" of the document and thinking more critically as a historian.
Photo Analysis Worksheet
The Photo Analysis Tool was created by the National Archives for the purpose of examining photographs as primary sources and effectively analyzing them. This tool guides them through the evaluation process, providing students with the details that should be observed/deemed important, the space to make inferences, and support questions. The analysis practice requires students to think critically in regards to primary sources in photographic format so as to better understand the historical narrative as it has been recorded.
Instructions:
Step 1:
- Observation--To begin, students will examine the photograph for two minutes, observing the overall document. They will form an overall impression of the photo before examining individual items and moving onto sectioning it off to better explore, finding new details. They will then record their observations in the chart provided, listing people, objects, and events/activities present within the picture.
- Inference--Next students will make inferences based on what they have observed and filled into the chart, listing three things that they can infer from the photograph.
- Questions--Finally, students will answer two questions regarding the document: What questions does this photograph raise in their minds and Where could they find answers to them. From there, students will research the answers to their questions, connecting the photograph to the larger historical narrative.
Lesson Plans
These two lessons focus on the changing role of women in WWII by examining the original and then altered Rosie the Riveter propaganda poster, music of the time, and listening to interviews of women who served. Activities present within the lesson plans require students to think critically about primary sources, particularly images, and how propaganda works.
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This lesson plan focuses on the communication between the soldiers on the front and their families back home. The activities and lesson center around several letters from one soldier, Corrado "Babe" Ciarlo, and the extent to which he told his family about the war. It is connected to the Ken Burn's documentary, The War. Additional resources are listed at the end. (Lesson plan can be modified to include additional letters from more soldiers.)
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