Actuvity for my students of 4º ESO Sección:
3.1. Here are some facts
about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that will you help understand the
next activity
Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945 an
atomic bomb named Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The explosion was
huge, the city was destroyed, and tens of thousands of people were killed. The
bomb was dropped by a plane named the Enola Gay which was piloted by Colonel
Paul Tibbetts. The bomb itself was over 10 feet long and weighed around 10,000
pounds. A small parachute was on the bomb in order to slow its drop and allow
the plane time to fly away from the blast zone.
Nagasaki
Despite witnessing the terrible destruction of
the bomb on Hiroshima, Emperor Hirohito and Japan still refused to surrender.
Three days later, on August 9, 1945, another atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man,
was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Again the devastation was horrible.
Surrender
Six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Emperor
Hirohito and Japan surrendered to US forces. The Emperor announced this on the
radio. When the Emperor Hirohito announced
Japan's unconditional surrender, he explained that "the war situation has
developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage."
It was the first time
most Japanese had heard his voice.
Interesting Facts
·
The lead
scientist on the Manhattan Project was J. Robert Oppenheimer. He is often
called the "father of the atomic bomb".
·
The first
bomb dropped on Hiroshima was made from uranium. The bomb dropped on
Nagasaki was made from plutonium, which was even more
powerful than uranium.
·
It is
thought that at least 135,000 people died from the Hiroshima explosion and
another 70,000 in Nagasaki. Many of these people were civilians including women
and children.
·
Hiroshima
was chosen because it was a large port city with an army base. It also had not
been damaged much by earlier bombings. This would show just how powerful the
new weapon was.
3.2. Read the
following poems:
November
By: William Stafford
From the sky in the form of snow
comes the great forgiveness.
Rain grown soft, the flakes descend
and rest; they nestle close, each one
arrived, welcomed and then at home.
If the sky lets go some day and I'm
requested for such volunteering
toward so clean a message, I’ll come.
The world goes on and while friends touch down
beside me, I too will come.
Let
Us Be Midwives! An untold story of the atomic bombing
by Sadako Kurihara, translated by Richard Minear
Night in the basement of a
concrete structure now in ruins.
Victims of the atomic bomb jammed the room;
It was dark—not even a single candle.
The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,
The closeness of sweaty people, the moans.
From out of all that, lo and behold, a voice:
"The baby’s coming!"
In that hellish basement,
At that very moment, a young woman had gone into labour.
In the dark, without a single match, what to do?
People forgot their own pains, worried about her.
And then: "I'm a midwife. I’ll help with the birth."
The speaker, seriously injured herself, had been moaning only moments before.
And so new life was born in the dark of that pit of hell.
And so the midwife died before dawn, still bathed in blood.
Let us be midwives!
Let us be midwives!
Even if we lay down our own lives to do so.
3.3. Watch
this video.
The song Enola Gay by the British band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the
Dark was very popular in the 1980s. Music is another form of art. Read the
lyrics carefully and watch the scenes in the video and read the comments in
YouTube below the song. The song was written in 1980. It means that almost 40
years after the bombing people still were impressed about it. The song was
published in YouTube in 2014 and the comments are recent so we are still
worried about nuclear bombs and nuclear attacks since they have not disappeared
in spite of the horror.
Notice
that Albert Einstein appears in the video. Research his connection with the
nuclear bombing in Hiroshima and we will talk about it in the class.
3.4. How
do you feel now? What do you think?
Express
it by writing a poem, haiku or acrostic poem about the bombing of the Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Next week
we will know about the world after the World War II. How people were scared
about another war during the Cold War and we will read a lovely literary text
about it: Snow by Julia Álvarez
3.5. Did
you enjoy the flipped classroom? In groups discuss and write the reasons and
post them on your website.
And remember:
“Tell me and I forget.
Teach me and I
remember.
Involve me and I
learn”
(Benjamin Franklin)
You can find more information about the song in the Wikipedia:
