I don’t know if most people could answer the question “How did the United States end up in World War 2?” I say that because most of my friends who aren’t history buffs can’t. That’s not really a good sampling, though. So, do you know how or why? To answer that question, let’s have a history lesson about Pearl Harbor and add that into our World War 2 Unit, which you could stick into either Modern History or US history lesson. Actually there are about 2 or 3 Pearl Harbor lessons in here, as I had several ideas for this. Let’s do some history.
Pearl Harbor resources
This is Future Ticia 2025, as I’m updating this I’m realizing I should probably give you some resources for this lesson, before I get into the story of it all.
I have not read most of these, so I can’t give much in the way of commentary on it, I’m mainly going off the vibes of the books.
- History Smashers: Pearl Harbor– this looks like a nice solid nonfiction book for older elementary with lots of high interest layout
- Pearl Harbor– a leveled book for late 2nd grade
- The Attack on Pearl Harbor– a nice solid book with lots of information.
My library had several others listed, but some were just repeats on this general theme, and the others were not specifically Pearl Harbor, so I didn’t include them.
The Story of Pearl Harbor
It all starts with FDR. We last saw him selling guns to the Allies. Well, here’s the general problem. While FDR had some interesting ideas for domestic policy, some were helpful, some were not. He wasn’t all that good at foreign policy.
Basically, Roosevelt set up a foreign policy that kept Japan from being able to trade with anyone, imposed steep tariffs, and did a few other things. All of this was designed to get Japan to stop the policies that the United States didn’t like. What he didn’t take into account (and the reason I say he botched his policy) is Japan’s cultural identity. When backed into a corner, they don’t exactly back down; they attack. They are a proud culture, and they wouldn’t respond well to his brow-beating.
But that’s a bunch of politics and things that my kids aren’t ready to delve into in that depth. So we listened to the Adventures in Odyssey, At Home and Abroad
Pearl Harbor lesson 1: Response to Pearl Harbor
Afterwards, we talked about what it might have felt like to be there and listened to “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” which there are a few versions of:
(Future Ticia 2025, needs to go back and edit that video up above, but the change of formats made it a little harder, so I’m adding this comment to myself so I know I want to click on it before I hit edit…)
This first one is a much more militaristic song. I can see this being sung and listened to by the soldiers in the Pacific field of war.
I have this song on my Cole Porter CD, and as we listened to both of these songs, the kids noticed they automatically started marching along with the music.
As we listened I asked them what did they feel? They said proud, like we can take anyone. That’s the point of this music, to inspire you, make you feel brave. It makes you want to do something.
Then we listened to FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech. It’s a great example of stirring the people to war, and inspiration.
And a final clip:
(Another video I cannot edit, but will have to go in later and see what I can do to better embed that)
These are great for your kids to get a feel for how everyone felt and what was going on.
Pearl Harbor lesson 2: attack simulation
Future Ticia 2025 here, I didn’t write this in my original version of this post, but I took the pictures and even edited some of these. Why? Why did I leave this idea out?
Okay, so there is an amazing website called Junior General. They have simulations of various different historical battles, and one of them is Pearl Harbor.
I printed out and painstakingly cut out all of these little bitty planes. Why I took the time to cut them out in so much detail, I have no clue.
We acted out the rules of the lessons, and the kids discovered a couple of things:
- it is very hard to figure out how to hit something flying around in the air
- it is so much easier to hit something that is still on the ground
- we are quite glad that we didn’t have to defend against a surprise attack like that.
We learned about the pilots of the planes, this was the part about this particular scenario that appealed to me, as we got to know a little bit about each person.
It was quite an interesting lesson to go through.
More great US history lessons
For more US history ideas check out my pinterest board or one or these posts:
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