Hero’s by Robert Cormier is a story of a young boy who has been in love, been hurt and been in war because of one guy. Francis, the main character, had his face disfigured in world war two. He comes back to his home town to try to find Larry, his childhood hero. Larry was believed by the town to be the best man ever to live. Francis saw him differently because of what Larry tried to do to his girlfriend. He seeks revenge for this and tries to kill him which would alter his life forever. The theme the author showed through out this book was that all problems can be solved without making big and radical moves to try to make things better.
The theme is shown in this book when Francis goes to Larry’s apartment. Francis goes there with one thing in his mind and that was to kill Larry. He gets there and finds himself remembering what thins were like back when he was younger, before everything. He remembers the wreck center, winning the ping pong championships, going to the movies with his girl friend and he remembers what Larry did to her. “I aim the gun at him, my finger on the trigger. But my hands are shaking and my caves a running and I am suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge of what I am about to do. Why has it come to this? “. This passage shows the theme well. He realizes the effects this would have on him and starts to question it. He doesn’t kill Larry but talks to him and realizes that even though he killed people in the war he couldn’t kill this man he had to much respect or care or something for him.
People that have strong feelings for or against something sometimes join a terrorist organization. This is a decision that changes there life in a drastic way. The terrorist that bombed the world trade center made a choice to join this group knowing that they might be asked to kill themselves. The choice that they made was extreme and changed their lives, when they could have chosen a different way to go about doing things and might still be alive.
This book shows that making a choice that will change you life forever in a negative way can be avoided totally. Francis almost made one of these choices but chose an alternative route. He avoided a life where he would most likely be in prison but still got what he wanted out if it.
Finally, this book shows the reader that the choices you make in life good or bad affect you and the people around you in some way. This is important because sometimes people make choices with out thinking about the consequences. These choices may not affect them immediately but later on they will see these affects and maybe wish that they would have done something differently. This theme is important in history because all the choices someone made in the past affects us now in the present. This book was a good book I would recommend it to anyone who is learning about the basics of life.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Book portfolio - Art of the lathe
The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild is a book of poems that take place around the great depression era. B.H Fairchild's had a different way of looking at things than most people. He looks past the exterior and sees what is really going on, what people are really like. He talked alot about how things arent always what they seem like. Something may seem bad or gross or tough at first glance without much thought but a closer look it proves to be something different. This theme is in history during the slavery in America.
The theme thoughout the book is realitivly the same. In one poem B.H. Fairchild talks about cigarettes. They are gross and bad for you and everyone knows this, but to the perosn that smokes them its all the memories they've had. Every time they need something to do take their mind off things they smoke because smoking to them is like looking at a scrap book. this is one of the memories in the poem," Or at the beach, minute flares floating in the deep dark, rising, falling in the hands of aunts and uncles telling the old stories, drowsy with beer, waves lapping the sand and dragging their voices down.". In another Poem he paints this picture of a tough looking guy, who gets in fights and drinks beer every night. Then it tells of how this man stays late at work to make sure everything is perfect, how he puts a towel on his head and dances with his lady griend in the kitchen. This guy seems tough and mean, but when you take a closer look you see that he is hardworking, loving and funny. These are qualities that yo would never see in him.
In america slavery was a huge problem. Everything about it was terrible, people were beaten often, had horrid living conditions, the food was scarce and they were forced to work all day. In genral People agree the slavery is bad, But in some cases the slaves referred to this time as " the good ol' days". As slaves, in some cases, had better clothes, better food and were happy. After they were freed they had a worse time than when they were slaves. They didnt have a job, werent eating well, didnt have good clothes. they also had to deal with the extreme racism in the south. Slavery was bad but in these peoples cases they had a better life when they were slaves. this is a side that we rarely hear about when talking about slavery in america.
These poems really show how poeple feel about things. People may show one thing but feel or think another. For example, Slavery was a bad thing and we, as americans, are still dealing with the effects of it, but some people it was the best time of their life. These poems show insight about how these people felt about being a slave and slavery.
Finally, these poems show the reader different ways of looking at things, to never take things a face value and the everything in life is not simple. These are important because it makes you look a little closer at stuff and to make you a little more independent. The themes in this book are important in history because everything in history you can;t take at face value, not everything in histroy is absolute fact, this aplies to life aswell. this was a good book i would reccomend it to anyone looking for a better hold on things going on around them.
The theme thoughout the book is realitivly the same. In one poem B.H. Fairchild talks about cigarettes. They are gross and bad for you and everyone knows this, but to the perosn that smokes them its all the memories they've had. Every time they need something to do take their mind off things they smoke because smoking to them is like looking at a scrap book. this is one of the memories in the poem," Or at the beach, minute flares floating in the deep dark, rising, falling in the hands of aunts and uncles telling the old stories, drowsy with beer, waves lapping the sand and dragging their voices down.". In another Poem he paints this picture of a tough looking guy, who gets in fights and drinks beer every night. Then it tells of how this man stays late at work to make sure everything is perfect, how he puts a towel on his head and dances with his lady griend in the kitchen. This guy seems tough and mean, but when you take a closer look you see that he is hardworking, loving and funny. These are qualities that yo would never see in him.
In america slavery was a huge problem. Everything about it was terrible, people were beaten often, had horrid living conditions, the food was scarce and they were forced to work all day. In genral People agree the slavery is bad, But in some cases the slaves referred to this time as " the good ol' days". As slaves, in some cases, had better clothes, better food and were happy. After they were freed they had a worse time than when they were slaves. They didnt have a job, werent eating well, didnt have good clothes. they also had to deal with the extreme racism in the south. Slavery was bad but in these peoples cases they had a better life when they were slaves. this is a side that we rarely hear about when talking about slavery in america.
These poems really show how poeple feel about things. People may show one thing but feel or think another. For example, Slavery was a bad thing and we, as americans, are still dealing with the effects of it, but some people it was the best time of their life. These poems show insight about how these people felt about being a slave and slavery.
Finally, these poems show the reader different ways of looking at things, to never take things a face value and the everything in life is not simple. These are important because it makes you look a little closer at stuff and to make you a little more independent. The themes in this book are important in history because everything in history you can;t take at face value, not everything in histroy is absolute fact, this aplies to life aswell. this was a good book i would reccomend it to anyone looking for a better hold on things going on around them.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
the bomb
The Descision to Use Atomic Weaponsfrom
A People's War?Howard Zinn
Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. the hatred in america was probably a big reason that the people didnt really care about dropping the bomb -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:35 AM Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." .... The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. we knew that this would happen and we didnt really care perhaps drop a bomb with the same strength but with out the radiation-Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:35 AM Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.
The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:
The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion." If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war. Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? they didnt do it because the war wouldnt get over as quick -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:57 AM Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan? The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in." Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. dont you think we should have a good reason to kill another 50000 people??? -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 1:42 PMWas it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:
Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply. The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged." True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.
A People's War?Howard Zinn
Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. the hatred in america was probably a big reason that the people didnt really care about dropping the bomb -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:35 AM Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." .... The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. we knew that this would happen and we didnt really care perhaps drop a bomb with the same strength but with out the radiation-Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:35 AM Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.
The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:
The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion." If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war. Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? they didnt do it because the war wouldnt get over as quick -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 11:57 AM Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan? The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in." Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. dont you think we should have a good reason to kill another 50000 people??? -Jonathan Barrows 5/24/09 1:42 PMWas it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:
Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply. The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged." True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.
american empire
American Empire
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....
There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:
Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help. I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came: 1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable. 2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable. 3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and 4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly. this guy need some serious help if he thinks he got a sign from god to take the philipines -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:26 AM The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected. It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease. The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:
Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . . No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . . I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . . My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed. It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. i think mckinley is just trying to fool the genral public into thinking that takeing the phillipines is ok because they started it and they were to wild and savage to take care of themselves -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:16 AMAfter the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents. In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus." William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns." James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles." The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire." A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces." It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility. In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:
The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses. Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:
One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures. Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed." In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:
The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten." this is crazy this kind of brutality is just unnessacry if you kill everyone over ten years old its just ridiculus that people would do that. -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:22 AMIn the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease. Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:
We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power. American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks. A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war. For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....
There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:
Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help. I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came: 1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable. 2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable. 3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and 4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly. this guy need some serious help if he thinks he got a sign from god to take the philipines -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:26 AM The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected. It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease. The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:
Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . . No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . . I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . . My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed. It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. i think mckinley is just trying to fool the genral public into thinking that takeing the phillipines is ok because they started it and they were to wild and savage to take care of themselves -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:16 AMAfter the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents. In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus." William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns." James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles." The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire." A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces." It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility. In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:
The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses. Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:
One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures. Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed." In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:
The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten." this is crazy this kind of brutality is just unnessacry if you kill everyone over ten years old its just ridiculus that people would do that. -Jonathan Barrows 5/26/09 10:22 AMIn the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease. Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:
We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power. American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks. A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war. For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
ronald reagan is widely credited with being the president" who ended the cold war". in essay form, please explain why ending the coldwar would be significant, what reagen did specifically to end it, and whether this description is truly accurate or not.
2. the period of 1968-1988 saw two significant scandals involving u.s presidents. in eassy form, please detail what these scandals were and why they were important to u.s history, and then analyze why ,from your perspective, they ended so differently.
3. historical perspective allows the citizen to veiw how an understanding of events can change over time , as more information becomes available. many events are first understood as being good or bad, only to later be understood as the oppisite. in this essay choose three events of the nixon-reagen era that may have been percieved one way at the time, but appear differently now. for each of these events asses what made these events difficult to understand at the time and/or, what has happened to change the modernveiw of that event.
2. the period of 1968-1988 saw two significant scandals involving u.s presidents. in eassy form, please detail what these scandals were and why they were important to u.s history, and then analyze why ,from your perspective, they ended so differently.
3. historical perspective allows the citizen to veiw how an understanding of events can change over time , as more information becomes available. many events are first understood as being good or bad, only to later be understood as the oppisite. in this essay choose three events of the nixon-reagen era that may have been percieved one way at the time, but appear differently now. for each of these events asses what made these events difficult to understand at the time and/or, what has happened to change the modernveiw of that event.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
book portfolio - flags of our fathers
In Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley, it tells the story of the men who fought for our country on Iwo Jima and the ones who were honored even though they didnt think they deserved it. The theme of the book shows the importance of comradery in a war and how fighting for the life of the man next to you is a very powerful motavtitor. This theme is present in every war, when you sleep next to the men u fight with yu form storng bonds. The point of this book is to more accuratly tell the story of what happened to the six flag raisers and the men they fought with on Iwo Jima.
Giving your life to save another is one of the highest honors for a person to recieve. The men this book talks about how they knew that there would be a time in the near future when it will be them or the guy next to him. Doc bradley is one example where on D day he was tending to his own leg when he saw other marines in need of medical help. He istanatly went over to help the other marine, help him engouh so that he could walk back to the medical tent under his own power. This example shows the theme because Doc Bradley did not worry about him self first but went to help others when they needed his help.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
LBJ
The civil rights act of 1964, banned the segregation of people based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity in public places. It made it illegal to discriminate when hiring people based on his or her skin color, race, religion and national origin. This act also said that schools have to desegregate. This law also gave women voting rights and equal opportunities in the work place.
Th civil rights act of 1964 is still an important law. It has made it so that every one is treated equally. With out this act we wouldn't be having the first african american become president. We wouldn't have a women be speaker of the house. This country would be a very violent one if this didn't happen. this act has helped the untied states become more united.
Th civil rights act of 1964 is still an important law. It has made it so that every one is treated equally. With out this act we wouldn't be having the first african american become president. We wouldn't have a women be speaker of the house. This country would be a very violent one if this didn't happen. this act has helped the untied states become more united.
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