Imagine that you are transported back to 1942 where the Western Defense Council (WDC) asks you to cast judgement on their plan to relocate American citizens of Japanese descent to internment camps in the interior United States. As a being from the future, they want your enlightened position on if their plan is: acceptable as is, needs some modifications before being implemented, or needs to be scrapped entirely in favor of a different plan.
Write a short memo in which you state and explain your decision to the WDC.
In our discussion, there was one student who felt the plan should go ahead as it did, one student who felt the plan should be scrapped entirely, and the rest of the class felt the plan should go ahead with some modification (mostly making the internment camps nicer).
Our discussion also began to look at how the relocation of Japanese-Americans touches on an idea that non-white Americans are somehow more authentically American than others. To illustrate this point we looked at the following video and political cartoon:
Would it be appropriate for America to continue this trend of putting Americans in secure internment camps based on a character they share with our aggressors during times of war/conflict?
e.g. - Terrorism is a modern threat. Should individuals that share characteristics with terrorists be relocated into internment camps?
Everyone responded to this prompt via a quickwrite in their writer's journals addressing reasons to agree, disagree, and questions they had. We then had a fishbowl discussion around this question which was assessed using the following rubric:
The general consensus in this discussion was that it would not be appropriate to relocate people into internment camps today because we have so much other security. This also lead to discussion of how much security and surveillance is necessary to keep us safe.
Homework:
Complete or revise any work that needs that attention.
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