Grade: 8

Unit 6: The Japanese Internment Camps

The purpose of this unit is to engage student in an inquiry-based learning experience designed around the questions: How can national citizenship conflict with human rights? From whose
viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing? From what angle or perspective? In what ways do multiple perspectives better inform our understanding of history? How do political, social and cultural
factors provide incentives and disincentives that influence economic choices? What is power and how is it gained, used, and justified?
These questions will allow students to investigate certain power relationships during WWII within the continental US while allowing students to use their own prior knowledge to
compare and contrast those relationships to their own lives through understanding the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping in any society. Students will be motivated
to investigate different power structures that existed during that time period and the roles people played as well as the dangers of remaining silent, apathetic, and indifferent. During
the course of the 4 weeks students will engage in close readings of informational texts, Closely Read photographs and historical documents, and craft narrative essay.
By the end of the unit, students will answer the following writing prompt:
In the last few weeks you have immersed yourself in the history of World War II at home. Part of your work has been reading journal entries or diary
entries from real Japanese-Americans that lived during that time period and where themselves in the camps.
Today you will be using what you have learned from that novel and other texts, fiction and nonfiction, to write a narrative. You will become a new
character in any of the texts you have read write from the perspective of either a Japanese-American that was displaced or as an American who
protested the governments discussion to place Japanese-Americans in the camps. You should make the story as historically accurate as possible.
Remember, a first person, personal narrative good narrative:
Establishes a clear point of view
Focuses closely on one character or characters
Uses strong sensory details to make the character(s) and event come alive
Uses precise language
Uses figurative language
May use dialogue and description to capture the character(s) and event
Concludes effectively


Note: There are many articles that have to do with the Japanese Internment Camps; you may choose others in the place of these.






Week Mentor text Supplemental
text/Multimedia
Reading
Standards
Writing
Standards
Speaking/Listening
Standards
Language
Standards
Assessment
1 Excerpts from Dear
Miss Breed: True
Stories of the
Japanese American
Incarceration During
World War II and a
Librarian Who Made
a Difference by
Joanne Oppenheim
Collection from Miss
Breed letters are
available at
Smithsonian:
http://www.smithso
nianeducation.org/e
ducators/lesson_pla
ns/japanese_intern
ment/

Japanese-American
Internment Article:
http://www.ushistory.org/
us/51e.asp

Internment Poster:
http://home.comcast.net/~
chtongyu/internment/post
er.html
A web version or print-
ready website with
valuable primary sources:
http://amhistory.si.edu/per
fectunion/non-
flash/overview.html
Historical Documents:
Executive Order 9066
http://www.pbs.org/childo
fcamp/history/eo9066.htm
l
Civil Liberties Act of 1988:
http://www.pbs.org/childo
fcamp/history/civilact.html
Presidential Letter of
Apology:
http://www.pbs.org/childo
fcamp/history/clinton.html
Primary Sources:
Chose weekly photographs
to do a close reading of a
photograph from:
http://www.loc.gov/teache
rs/classroommaterials/pri
marysourcesets/internmen
t/pdf/teacher_guide.pdf

8.RI.1
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Quick Write
Exit Slip


2 Excerpts from
Stanley Hayami,
Nisei Son by Joanne
Oppenheim
Japanese
Americans: The War
at Home, Scholastic

Teaching with the Hayami
diary:
http://hayamidiary.com/co
ntent/teaching-hayami-
diary
Scholastic:
http://teacher.scholastic.co
m/Activities/wwii/ahf/mine
ta/background.htm
8.RI.1
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Quick Write
Exit Slips
Conferencing

3 Excerpts from A
Fence Away from
Freedom: Japanese
Americans and
World War II by
Ellen Levine


Greatest Mysteries of
WWII: The Japanese
Internment Camps
Documentary:

https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=DxekM4zGAhY
8.RI.1
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Exit Slips
Conferencing
Begin Performance
Assessment Narrative
and Debate for or
against Japanese
Interment Camps
4 Poetry from
Japanese Interment
Camp:
Barracks Home
What More
Disillusion
https://www.school
ogy.com/docviewer
/128057123/a6a089
8cce3cfcb39bd58084
90c838ba
Watch: Great Mysteries of
WWII: The Japanese
Internment Camps in
https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=DxekM4zGAhY
8.RI.1
8.RI.2
8.RI.3
8.RI.4

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8.SL.1
8.SL.5
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8.L.1
8.L.2
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8.L.6
Exit Slips
Conferencing
Performance
Assessment
Narrative and
Debate for or
against Japanese
Interment Camps
*note: Bold standards indicate when new standard is introduced
**Note: standards highlighted are the focus standards for the week