Grace Amemiya stood in front of a classroom full of eighth graders and told them about the year she spent as number 6251 in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
“This incarceration was an insult,” the 88-year old said. “I was charged with only one crime—being born Japanese American.”
Amemiya was one of several speakers visiting Boone Middle School as a highlight of the eighth grade’s interdisciplinary unit on World War II.
Jeanie McElvain (BA ’75), a reading teacher in Boone, helped initiate the school-wide effort 18 years ago, her second year in the district. She and fellow teacher, Georgiann Hagen, taught The Diary of Anne Frank in their classes and wanted to do more.
“It started as a language arts unit and has grown into an interdisciplinary unit,” McElvain said. “The social studies, science, math, music, art, reading, and language arts classes are or have been involved in some years.”
In her math class, Lynne Greiner (BA ’87) has her students create a mural of a World War II photo by enlarging each 1 inch square of the image by five times and combining their work. She also teaches the students formulas they can apply in their science class, where they have a flight unit.
Music classes learn songs from the era. Language arts students do topical research projects with visual and oral presentation components.
In McElvain’s reading class, students still read The Diary of Anne Frank among other books and sources.
“We learn about the Holocaust and also bring the lessons to present day focus by talking about the roles of bystanders, perpetrators, and rescuers,” McElvain said. “I want the kids to see that there are many kinds of resistance and that it is important to think for oneself, not to follow a crowd blindly.”
Students share their work from all of their classes in an open house at the end of the unit.
“The purpose is to give an overview of World War II and whet the students’ interest for learning more,” McElvain said.
Several of the World War II speakers, including war veterans, attend the open house each year to see what the students have learned and produced.
Donald Schoof, a Sergeant in the Intelligence Department who traveled through Africa and Italy during the war, said he enjoys the students’ “spirit and their reaction” when he speaks and returns for the open house.
“I feel good about the fact that the kids and the school are interested in hearing about this part of history,” he said.
Eighth grader Kayla Terbeck said listening to the speakers and meeting people who experienced World War II firsthand
was the best part of the unit for her.
“It’s amazing how much they’ve gone through and the stories they have to tell,” she said. “It’s almost like a movie.”
Amemiya said she hopes the students learn from the stories she and other speakers tell each year.
Hers is a story of forgiveness. After suffering a year incarcerated in her own country with machine gun towers looming overhead, she served returning American GIs as a nurse and said she counts helping to heal her fellow Americans as a great blessing.
“One has to forgive,” she said. “We can’t live with bitterness and ruin our lives. I tell the students to always forgive what you have no control over.”
Grace Amemiya was recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Check out the story here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5974819n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0
