Wallabies stunning win breaks hoodoo!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I think it is going to be a very good week!!!!

Happy History Halloween!

GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Days before Halloween on a darkened street Dwight Stoutzenberger aimed his digital camera at a wall not far from where a guide was telling ghost stories to a group of tourists.

Gettysburg, a historic Civil War town, is famous for ghosts and reportedly haunted sites where uniformed soldiers mysteriously walk through closed doors, or ornaments shift positions on a mantelpiece.

As Stoutzenberger scrolled through his photos he found several exposures showing a bright light amid a fuzzy white oval shape apparently hovering near the wall down the street.

Tour guide Ann Griffith, who has been doing ghost tours in Gettysburg for 16 years, speculated that it could be an orb -- a point of light that she says is commonly seen around haunted sites.

Stoutzenberger, 34, from Elizabethtown in central Pennsylvania, was happy to have found evidence of the spirit world.

"I'm a believer," he said. "I go on these tours so that maybe I can catch an orb."

The tour was run by Ghosts of Gettysburg, one of about a dozen companies offering such tours of the southern Pennsylvania town. Tourists, some who believe in ghosts, come from as far away as northern Idaho and Minnesota.

Gettysburg is reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of thousands of soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, which turned the American Civil War in favor of Unionist forces.

Griffith said the battle, in which some 7,000 soldiers were killed, explains why modern Gettysburg is populated with the ghosts of those who died horribly, or whose bodies were hurriedly buried in shallow graves during the summer heat.

"A lot of them don't know they are dead," she explained. "A lot of them still think they are fighting the biggest battle of their life."

But for history buff Mark Appellman, 46, a computer analyst from Chicago, ghost tours weren't a priority during his visit.

"I'm a Civil War nut," he said.

Outside a local elementary school that had been used as a hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg Griffith provided gruesome details.

"The surgeons would perform amputations without anesthetic, and dispose of the limbs in a wheelbarrow," she said, adding that the arms and legs were probably buried under what is now a parking lot outside the school, possibly explaining why orbs are frequently seen there.

The only real evidence of Gettysburg's storied past shown to the tour group was historical, rather than spiritual. About 100 bullet holes marked the spot in the side of the Farnsworth House, where Confederate marksmen shot at Union soldiers who returned fire.

Griffith said the house has at times been visited by the wandering spirit of a soldier whose presence prompted a psychic to try to banish him.

"Your job as a soldier is done," the psychic told the soldier, according to Griffith. "It's time to go - you are dead."

Remember what I told you!!!!!

Yep, the first question for HEX was hard and yep the second question was better.

Just remember that a question is hard for "everybody" or easy for "everybody". Yes, you may not have written down the perfect answer - the one that you wanted to get down. BUT, you may still have written down an answer much better than others did at other schools.

You would not be the first student to do badly by your own standards, but very well by everyone else's standards.

Despite what Warren says... everything is relative!!!!!!!!! lol

So.... how was it????

Was it harder than you thought? Was it easier than you thought?
Ahhhhhhh! It's all over!!!!!

HEX -1

Good Luck!

Tonight, look at the themes I posted earlier. Go through them in your mind, one by one, and think... what / who am I going to write about if this comes up?

Tomorrow, answer the question and engage with the quote!

HEX -2

Make sure you engage with the quote, don't just refer to it!
Make sure you display a deep knowledge of your historians and the effect of their contexts on their history writing!
Make sure you wear clean socks!
And a lucky charm, don't forget the lucky charm!!

Lil noticed this in the MX today

Another strange blonde lady with Zahi Hawass! lol

HEX -3

Max!!!

Make sure you get your poetry in tomorrow!!! Try and get it on to your teacher's desk before school if you can and in a manila folder.

I have survived my spider bite!!!!

Bad news for people in HEX 2 who thought they would be able to sleep in tomorrow morning! My Doctor told me to stop trying to get attention and to get back to work. So class as usual on Tuesday morning.

HEX -4

Learning from Layne Beachley!


When you are not practicing,
remember, someone somewhere is practicing,
and when they meet you they will beat you!

HEX Question Themes

Q.1 HISTORIOGRAPHY

2009

Critically evaluate the way history has been constructed and recorded over time.
Support your argument with reference to at least TWO sources you have studied.

2008

How do historians work? Support your argument with close reference to the Source and at least TWO sources you have studied.

2007

Critically evaluate the role of the historian in the construction of history. Support your argument with reference to at least TWO sources you have studied.

2006

What is the purposes of history? Support your argument with reference to at least TWO sources you have studied.

2005

What is the purposes of history? Who is history for? Support your argument with reference to at least TWO sources you have studied.

2004

How have approaches to history changed over time? Support your argument with reference to as many sources you like.

2003

Evaluate the aims and purposes of history. Support your argument with reference to as many sources you like.

2002

Is it possible to have objective history? Support your argument with reference to as many sources you like.

2001

Discuss how historians use evidence to reconstruct the past. Support your argument with reference to as many sources you like.

Q.2 HISTORICAL JESUS


2009

Explain the changing interpretations in at least ONE area of debate from your chosen case study.

2008

How do historians work? Use ONE area of debate from your chosen case study.

2007

What is the purpose of history? Use ONE area of debate from your chosen case study.

2006

How do historians work? How useful are facts to an historian? How much is history just interpretation? Use ONE area of debate from your chosen case study.

2005

Assess the ways in which historians use sources, and evidence gathered from those sources, to change debates in history. Use as many areas of debate from your chosen case study as you like.

2004

Assess the importance of historians themselves in the debates relating to your chosen case study. Use as many areas of debate from your chosen case study as you like.

2003

How do historians work? Assess TWO areas of historical debate that highlight
differing interpretations of your chosen case study.

2002

Analyse TWO areas of historical debate in relation to relevant historiographical issues* within your chosen case study. (* You get to choose: Aims & purposes of history? Who are the historians? How has the writing of history changed over time? Why has the writing of history changed over time?)

2001

Discuss the way ONE historical interpretation of issues in your case study differs from at least ONE other interpretation.

HEX -5

Question One: The Historiography Question


You really need to engage with the quote and refer back to it quite regularly.

Try to answer the question in the first paragraph and then analyse the quote in some detail from the second paragraph onwards.

Don’t spend the whole of the first papagraph taking the quote to pieces and leaving the marker wondering what your answer to the question actually is.

When the question says “use two other sources” they mean that it should be very clear in your answer that you have very detailed knowledge of two historians (different from the one in the quote) and how their contexts have influenced them & the way they write their history.

Most of the answers during our Term 3 “Festival of the Essay” were too short. It is highly unlikely that you would have developed a complex enough argument under 1200 words to get 24 or 25 /25. You should be aiming at 1,500 words by now!

Gaby!!!!! This one is for you!!!!

This is you Gaby!!! 50% Excellent historian 50% Excellent baker!

HEX -6

Get studying!!!!!

Shock... horror... but it seems that Jane Austen may have been a fraud!

Jane Austen couldn't spell, had no grasp of punctuation and her writing betrayed an odd accent, according to an Oxford University academic.

Prof Kathryn Sutherland said analysis of Austen's handwritten letters and manuscripts reveal that her finished novels owed as much to the intervention of her editor as to the genius of the author.

Page after page was written without paragraphs, including the sparkling dialogue for which Austen is known. The manuscript for Persuasion, the only one of her novels to survive in its unedited form, looks very different from the finished product.

"The reputation of no other English novelist rests so firmly on the issue of style, on the poise and emphasis of sentence and phrase, captured in precisely weighed punctuation. But in reading the manuscripts it quickly becomes clear that this delicate precision is missing. This suggests somebody else was heavily involved in the editing process between manuscript and printed book," Prof Sutherland said.

The editor in question is believed to have been William Gifford, a poet and critic who worked for Austen's second publisher, John Murray.

"Gifford was a classical scholar known for being quite a pedant. He took Austen's English and turned it into something different - an almost Johnsonian, formal style," Prof Sutherland said.

"Austen broke many of the rules for writing 'good' English. Her words were jumbled together and there was a level of eccentricity in her spelling - what we would call wrong.

"She has this reputation for clear and elegant English but her writing was actually more interesting than that. She was a more experimental writer than we give her credit for. Her exchanges between characters don't separate out one speaker from another, but that can heighten the drama of a scene.

"It was closer to the style of Virginia Woolf. She was very much ahead of her time."

Amongst Austen's grammatical misdemeanours was an inability to master the 'i before e' rule. Her manuscripts are littered with distant 'veiws' and characters who 'recieve' guests. Elsewhere, she wrote "tomatoes" as "tomatas" and "arraroot" for "arrowroot" - peculiarities of spelling that reflect Austen's regional accent, Prof Sutherland explained. "In some of her writing, her Hampshire accent is very strong. She had a definite Hampshire burr."

Over 1,000 of these handwritten pages will be placed online next Monday as the culmination of a three-year project led by Prof Sutherland in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries, King's College London and the British Library. The collection reunites the letters and manuscripts for the first time since 1845, when they were scattered by the terms of her sister Cassandra's will.

They range from fiction written in early childhood to the manuscript for Sanditon, the novel that Austen was writing when she died in 1817. Sadly, the manuscripts for Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma, her most famous novels, were destroyed after being set in print. I wonder why??? Mmmmmmmm

Good Luck for Ancient History!!!!

I won't see you after the exam. I have to take the Year 10 History Debating Team to Caringbah High.

But I will see you before you go in at 9.25!

Greece 800-500 BC Question Themes

1 - 7 Causes of colonisation
2 - 4 Results of colonisation
3 - 6 Causes of tyranny
4 - 1 Results of tyranny
5 - 9 Contribution / impact of Solon
6 - 6 Contribution / impact of the Peisistratus
7 - 7 Contribution / impact of Cleisthenes
8 - 2 Impact of hoplite warfare
9 - 4 Foreign policy of Sparta
* - 2 Other



2009

Causes of colonisation (1)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5) or Peisistratus (6)

2008

Causes of tyranny (3)
Contribution / impact of Cleisthenes (7)

2007

Causes of colonisation (1)
Contribution / impact of the Peisistratus (6)

2006

Impact of hoplite warfare (8)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5)

2005

Foreign policy of Sparta (9)
Contribution / impact of Draco (*) and Solon (5)

2004

Results of colonisation (2)
Impact / contribution of Solon (5)
Causes and nature of tyrannies (3)
Impact / contribution of Cleisthenes (7)

2003

Contribution / impact of the Peisistratids (6)
Contribution / impact of Cleisthenes (7)
Causes and results of colonisation (1) (2)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5)

2002

Results of colonisation (2)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5)
Causes of tyranny (3)
Contribution / impact of Cleisthenes (7)

2001

Causes of tyranny (3)
Contribution / impact of Cleisthenes (7)
Causes of Pan-Hellenic sites (*)
Impact of hoplite warfare (8)

2000

Results of colonisation (2)
Contribution / impact of Peisistratus (6) / Cleisthenes (7)
Foreign policy of Sparta (9)

1999

Causes of colonisation (1)
Causes of tyranny (3)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5)

1998

Links between colonies and their mother cities (1)
Contribution / impact of Peisistratids (6)
Contribution / impact of Solon (5) / Cleisthenes (7)

1997

Results of colonisation (1)
Results of tyranny (4)
Reforms of Athenian government (*)

1996

Causes of tyranny (3)
Causes and contribution / impact of Solon (5)
Foreign policy of Sparta (9)

1995

Causes of colonisation (1)
Contribution / impact of the Peisistratids (6)
Foreign policy of Sparta (9)

This is my favourite Iron Chef Gaby!!!

A few years ago in Japan I saw a show called Iron Chef Instant Noodle. It was a bit of a send up, but they still did amazing things with instant noodles. One guy made a jacket. lol

You should be studying!!! But if you are watching Iron Chef Australia to De-stress

Ben is on the left and my Brendan is on the right! Ben is Neil Perry's Assistant tonight.

Modern on Wednesday and Ancient on Friday!!!

This was sent to me by a friend in Sweden

On the last day of senior high school in Moscow this year - that is the last day of Year 12 - "all" alcohol sales, for everyone in the city, were banned from 12 noon of 25/5/10 until 12 noon the next day. No joke!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol

Do you think that they might have a drinking problem in Russia at the moment???

HSC blues? It could be worse!

dog + frisbee + Grand Canyon =



Don't start ringing the RSPCA! I'm pretty sure it's a photoshop. If it isn't... oh dear.

Should students memorise their essays?

This is really quite interesting. I was particularly amused that someone who got 98.85 could already have forgotten what she did for History Extension and get it mixed up with Modern History. lol

From today's Sydney Morning Herald

Date: October 16 2010

THE ACADEMIC PETER AUBUSSON

MEMORISING answers is not good preparation for life or university, but this is not life, learning and university. It is an exam. If students are being coached to memorise answers it might be because it has worked. They probably don't get the top marks but they may score well. Mind you, I am certainly not willing to bet against a tutor with years of experience in a competition with 17- or 18-year-olds on their first attempt.

This year the examiners might outsmart them, but I doubt it. Examiners will struggle because the HSC exams have a degree of predictability. They are based on known content and skills. They use the same, known format. If the exam drifts too far from past norms people scream and the media vent complaints of unfairness. The consequence is that parts of exams are readily exploited by prepared answers.

There is a moral dimension to the process. It is one thing to memorise an answer which you have prepared, but it is wrong to present an answer prepared by someone else. The question we should be asking is not should it be done - the answer is self-evident. Rather we should ask why might some people engage in shady practices?

High-stakes tests always corrupt teaching, learning and curriculum. The Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR), produced from HSC data, is a high-stakes cull. Memorising answers is just one strategy students have used to perform in examination sweat boxes. Cohorts of students studying Latin in the 1970s routinely memorised the English translation of the entire Latin text to get 100 per cent on set translation passages. Someone got a bright idea. He measured the length of passages set in past papers and memorised only those that fell within this range. Needless to say, he did very well. I wonder whether it would have been easier to learn Latin.

Answer memorisation is inevitable in high-stakes and somewhat predictable examinations. We speak as if students in examinations spend their time in critical appraisal, analysis or proofs - pure fraud. The reality is that many questions are answered by a process of ''recognition of sameness''. This exam question is similar to one they have done before and requires the same or an adapted response. For the well-prepared, only some questions require careful, lengthy deliberation. In the unreal world of exams with their time limits, single drafts and ritualised marking schemes, how could it be otherwise? If you step up for the biology exam and you are asked about Koch's postulates (again) and you haven't memorised them, no amount of critical thinking will produce them - unless, of course, you are Robert Koch.

Associate Professor Peter Aubusson is head of the teacher education program at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is a former secondary science teacher.

THE MARKER LOUISE WARD

I HAVE been marking the HSC English exam for many years and would strongly advise against memorising essays as an effective way of preparing for an English exam.

Before marking commences, markers are briefed on how to award marks for each question. Students should understand that a key discriminator for judging an answer relates to how well it addresses the full scope of the question. Learnt responses don't gain high marks as they generally don't address all aspects of the question.

Some students compose prepared responses that address questions from previous years' examinations. This often disadvantages them considerably since they are distracted from addressing the question they are required to answer.

It is especially a dangerous practice to memorise a story or essay written by someone else and reproduce all or parts of it in an English exam. I think students sometimes forget that markers are experienced English teachers who are very familiar with material that is published to support them during their HSC preparation, as well as the work of a wide range of authors and filmmakers. If I am suspicious an answer has been memorised from another source I am required to report it to the Supervisor of Marking. If the answer is found to be plagiarised, the consequences for that student may be a zero mark or a reduced mark for that question.

It is important for students to understand that memorising essays and reproducing them in an exam is not the way to achieve high marks. I am sure their teachers have been telling them that throughout the year. Some of the ways I advise my students to best prepare for the HSC English examinations is to be thoroughly familiar with all the set texts, complete all class work during the year, write responses to a variety of questions under timed conditions and understand the standard that is required to achieve high marks.

My experience as a marker and all the comments from the examiners in the marking reports (published by the Board of Studies) over the years show memorising essays is not the way to achieve high marks and may prevent a student from realising his or her full potential.

Louise Ward has taught English in government and non-government schools for more than 20 years. She has extensive experience as a marker and senior marker of HSC and School Certificate exams.

THE TEACHER GARY JOHNSON

THE answer is simply one word - no. But let me explain the advice I've given to many reluctant young writers - often boys - over the years.

Learning an essay off by heart and regurgitating it in an examination fails to demonstrate the many important skills we as educators are trying to instil in our students.

Students, as part of their learning and skills development, certainly need to analyse questions, practise writing essays and refining their responses to material they have learnt; this is an integral part of their education. In this process students learn to deconstruct questions, synthesise and analyse complex ideas and demonstrate their capacity to think, something educators and employers agree is vital.

The NSW curriculum is designed so students learn important skills that will be useful in their lives. For example, the English syllabus aims to enable students to understand, use and value the English language and to become thoughtful and effective communicators.

An admirable aim which, when examined, requires students to present something more than a collection of memorised essays.

Gary Johnson is principal of Cherrybrook High School.

THE STUDENT ELISE WOOD

I SAT the HSC last year and submitted 22 extended pieces of writing, across seven subjects, in the space of three weeks. Of those, 12 were memorised. In my eyes, and in many of my teachers' eyes, this was not a form of ''cheating''. It was preparation.

The process of memorising an essay is not a case of copying ideas and regurgitating them. It involves decoding a subject's rubric, researching, writing, editing, writing, second-guessing, a little more writing, until finally you produce a piece of work that you are sure about using in the exam.

There's a difference between memorising an essay and rote learning. I learnt in my final year of school that you cannot just write what you have memorised. Critically engaging with the question at hand is vital. Unless you have cheated the system and obtained the exact wording of a question, there is still a need to construct a thesis and a line of argument.

Of course, memorising an essay cannot be done in all subjects. Only questions that will be broad, because they are based on interpretation and judgment, can have answers memorised. Those based on a content-heavy syllabus cannot. For example, in the HSC history extension exam there are two questions. The first is a historiography essay that draws on content from Herodotus and Karl Marx, through to the postmodern dichotomy of histories as narratives. This essay cannot be memorised.

The second question is a case study of a personality that uses open terms, such as ''to what extent'', to indicate the need for individual insight, judgment and interpretation. After crafting this essay for a year, I memorised 1500 words in six hours.

Memorising essays should not be frowned upon. It was through this process that I learnt the academic skills needed for tertiary education.

While it is futile to memorise essays for university exams, the scholarship I adopted during the HSC has enabled me to identify the requirements of different questions, and that I always ''answer the question. It's donkey dumb, just answer the question'' (logic courtesy of my school's HSIE department).

Although there is an increasing number of gimmicks used by students to prepare for the HSC, essay memorising is not one of them. Students attach weights to their pens in the hope that they will develop muscles to allow them to write faster. Others record study notes and listen to them on their iPod as they sleep. These could all be viewed as excessive practices that disadvantage other students. The difference with memorising essays is that it works.

Elise Wood attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and obtained an ATAR of 98.85. She is studying international and global studies at the University of Sydney.

Should students memorise their essays?

Gaby's bad dream isn't so bad! lol

Gaby said...

Also sir, WHAT IF THERE'S NOT A WEIMAR QUESTION!?!?! I had a bad dream about it.

Well... I'm sorry but yes Gaby they can ask you a generalist question and NOT a direct question on the collapse of Weimar. It doesn't happen often - 3 times in the last 10 years - but does happen.

These are the three "out there" questions that they have asked since 2000:

(a) Explain how and why German social and cultural life changed in the period 1923–1939. ( Half Weimar & half Nazi Germany, but all about society & culture rather than politics)

(a) Assess the impact of the Nazi Party on German society up to and including 1933. (Its all Nazi Party & society not collapse of Weimar)

(a) Account for the development of militarism in Germany between 1928 and 1939. (This is def. NOT a question on the collapse of Weimar)

So... sorry, but "yes" there might not be a SPECIFIC question on the collapse of Weimar.

They can ask any of the following for the FIRST question:

• successes and failures of democracy
• nature and role of nationalism
• influence of the German army
• nature and influence of racism
• changes in society
• the nature and impact of Nazism

– emergence of the Democratic Republic and the impact of the Treaty of Versailles
– political, economic and social issues in the Weimar Republic to 1929
– collapse of the Weimar Republic 1929–1933
– impact of the Great Depression on Germany
– rise of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1923

DON'T try and pick the question. DON'T pick some topics you think might come up and only study them, they can ask anything on your syllabus really.

But do look at what questions were asked and when they were asked so that you are aware of what is likely and unlikely so that you don't get a bad surprise.

It has been a really long time since they asked a question about the impact of the Treaty of Versailles. So include it as part of your study.

Questions from Sarah 2 - War in the Pacific

From Sarah:

also, would you say the main reasons for the japanese defeat were :

rapid rate of japanese conquering territories - inability to consolidate new territory, men and resources spread all over pacific,
j. without a clear plan
inability to produce enough aircraft, shipping etc- could barely cope with losses, whereas america's manufacturing ability gave america the advantage.
also, japan suffering from shortages in materials and food.
division within j. leadership

All of these are good +

I would also add: Magic - let the allies know exactly what Japanese were going to do before they did it.

& allied submarine warfare - sank so much Japanese shipping it wasn't funny - they got almost nothing back to Japan.

THEY SHOULD HAVE DESTROYED THE SUBMARINE PENS WHEN THEY HIT PEARL H.

Questions from Sarah 1 - War in the Pacific

Sarah is having trouble finding good quotes from historians like we have for Nazi Germany.

There is nothing wrong there! The War in the Pacific has not attracted as much attention as Nazi Germany and the big name historians have not gotten into it. So you won't find the big history schools & historiography that you can find easily on the Nazis.

Probably the best book:

Hayashi & Coox “Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War”

The author notes what some others have, and that is the military planners had not really figured the how other countries would react to the Japanese moves into South Indo-China.

The Japanese army considered Britain to be “senile,” and figured that the German submarines and a German invasion of Britain would take care of the British once and for all.

The military did not understand or believe, for that matter, the industrial capability of the United states. Plus, they “made light of America's spiritual fiber.”

In effect, the military over-estimated the ability of Germany, and pretty much under-estimated the abilities of other countries.

In talking about Guadalcanal, the author notes that American forces landed with full equipment, whereas Japanese forces attempting to land were often mauled by US planes during the attempt. The Japanese controlled neither the skies nor the sea at Guadalcanal.

Further, the author says the front-line troops began to die of hunger, and many became sick with malaria and other diseases.

The author notes a number of problems relating to the Japanese preparation for defense of the homeland if Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet were used:

Lack of labor; lowered production; shortages of food; lack of arms; lack of places for soldiers to stay; difficulties in procuring lumber form those who owned it; plus disorderliness “of officers and men swarming in towns and villages; the troops were especially selfish in behavior where food was concerned.”

Supplies of fuel for the Army were extremely low late in the war. Eventually alcohol would have to be used. (These kinds of problems caused troubles for the planes as far as their engines went, which was just another factor damaging Japanese aerial defenses.)

As far as developing an atomic bomb goes, Japan had a bit of a program, but its scientists didn't think a bomb could be developed before the end of the war.

An American invasion of Japan would have been a good news-bad news type of thing. The bad news was that there would be three times the number of transports as were used in the attack on Germany. The good news was that it would give the Japanese more targets to shoot at.

April 8, 1945: Percepts Concerning the Decisive Battle manual was given to the entire Army. It emphasized the use of suicide tactics, and urged the men to “defend Imperial soil to the last.”

Article XI of the Meiji Constitution of 1889: “The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and of the Navy.”

Before the outbreak of the war, some Japanese governmental officials stressed the disunity in the US as far as some people wanting the country to remain isolationist while others wanted the US to actively support Britain.

The author has some interesting bits on Japanese claims of war tallies:
Battle of Savo Island, Aug. 8, 1942: Japanese claim the US lost 8 cruisers and 6 destroyers. The actual losses were 4 cruisers and 0 destroyers.
Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Aug. 24, 1942: Japanese claim one carrier was severely damaged, and another carrier and a battleship were also damaged. One carrier was actually damaged. What the Japanese didn't include was their own losses of one carrier, one destroyer, one transport and 90 planes (US losses were 20 planes.)
Battle of Cape Esperance, Oct. 11-12, 1942: Japanese claim one heavy cruiser and one destroyer were sunk, and one cruiser was damaged. Actual results; the US lost one destroyer. The Japanese lost a heavy cruiser and three destroyers in total.
Battle of Santa Cruz; Oct. 26, 1942: Japanese claim three aircraft carriers, one battleship, one cruiser, and one destroyer were all sunk. Actual losses were one carrier and one destroyer.
Battle of Guadalcanal, Nov. 13-15. Japanese claim 7-8 cruisers, 4-8 destroyers sunk, 2 battleships crippled, 2-3 cruisers and 4 destroyers crippled. The US actually lost 3 cruisers and 7 destroyers sunk, so the Japanese claims for once were not very far off. On their side, the Japanese losses were:
Nov. 13: One battleship, 2 destroyers sunk, 4 destroyers hurt.
Nov. 14: One heavy cruiser, six transports sunk, variety of other ships damaged.
Nov. 15: One battleship sunk, plus another destroyer sunk.
The US attack on Truk island seems to have accomplished quite a bit. It cut Japanese supplies by 75%; 2 likght cruisers, 4 destoryers, 3 auxiliary cruisers, 2 submarine tenders, 2 subchasers, 1 armed trawler and a plane ferry were destroyed, and 24 Marine ships destroyed.
The statistics for the Japanese side of the Okinawa campaign include 107,539 “counted dead,” 23,764 probably dead, sealed in caves or buried by the Japanese themselves, 10,755 prisoners-of-war, and 7,850 planes shot down. US losses were 49,151 (wounded, dead, missing-in-action).Plane losses were 763.

To show just how totally unrealistic some of the Japanese officials responded to the atomic bomb, a report of a meeting between the War Minister Anami and Field Marshal Hata is given, where it's revealed that the bomb didn't seem to have much of an effect on anything one foot below the surface of the ground, and the War Minister thought that was great news.

BUT... it came out in 1959!! That's along time ago. Most of the Pacific War history is geeky military history concentrating on very small specialised aspects of the war.

The best stuff is:


Gailey “The War in the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay”

Google the title & you will get some of the book.

Others:

War in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay : the story of the ... - Google Books

Bergerud, Fire in the Sky: The Air War in the South Pacific

Blair, Silent Victory (submarine war)

Costello, The Pacific War

Craven & Cate The Army Air Forces in World War II.

Inoguchi & Nakajima, The Divine Wind (Kamikaze)

Kirby, The War Against Japan

Leary, We Shall Return: MacArthur's Commanders and the Defeat of Japan

Long, Australia in the War of 1939–45, Army. Vol. 7, The Final Campaigns

McCarthy, Australia in the War of 1939–45, Army. Vol. 5, South-West Pacific Area—First Year: Kokoda to Wau

Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific

Potter & Nimitz, Triumph in the Pacific

Potter, Bull Halsey

Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan

Toland, The Rising Sun

Willmot, Empires in the Balance

Harries, Soldiers of the Sun : The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army


If you quote the title and the author & you paraphrase for a line or two what they are on about that is enough. The markers of this part will be far more interested in you constructing a good answer, having lots of detail & using the vocab. properly. If you can then throw in a reference or two to a couple of these historians that will be quite enough to get you into the big marks.

2009 Year 12 and I wish you the best of luck with your HSC!!!!!

Just remember that...

Something reassuring before you sit your first English exam!

I cdnuolt blveiee taht
I cluod aulaclty
uesdnatnrd waht I was
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor
of the hmuan mnid,
aoccdrnig to a rscheearch
at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it dseno't mtaetr in waht
oerdr the ltteres in a wrod
are, the olny
iproamtnt tihng is taht the
frsit and lsat ltteer be in the
rghit pclae. The rset can be a
taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos
not raed ervey lteter by
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Azanmig huh?
yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot
slpeling was ipmorant..

Don't do this in English!!!!

His professor sent him an e-mail the following day:

Dear Michael,

Every year I attempt to boost my students’ final grades by giving them this relatively simple exam consisting of 100 True/False questions from only 3 chapters of material. For the past 20 years that I have taught Intro Communications 101 at this institution I have never once seen someone score below a 65 on this exam. Consequently, your score of a zero is the first in history and ultimately brought the entire class average down a whole 8 points.
There were two possible answer choices: A (True) and B (False). You chose C for all 100 questions in an obvious attempt to get lucky with a least a quarter of the answers. It’s as if you didn’t look at a single question. Unfortunately, this brings your final grade in this class to failing. See you next year!

May God have mercy on your soul.

Sincerely,
Professor William Turner

P.S. If all else fails, go with B from now on. B is the new C

Some unusual questions for the Pacific War

1. What impact did imperialism have in the Pacific from 1937 to 1942? Did it cause the Pacific War?

2. Which event had the most the impact in the course of the Pacific War - the fall of the Philippines, the fall of Singapore, the Burma campaign or the fall of the Dutch East Indies?

3. How important a turning point in the Pacific War was the Battle of Guadalcanal?

4. How important to the outcome of the Pacific War was the New Guinea campaign?

5. Which were more effective in the Pacific War - Japanese or Allied strategies?

6. Did Allied strategies or the Allied economies win the pacific War?

7. What effect did the war have on the home fronts in Japan and Australia?

8. How were civilians in occupied territories in South-East Asia effected by the Pacific War? In your answer discuss life under Occupation, the prevalence of collaboration and resistance and the use of slave labour

9. After its incredible early success why did Japan go on to lose the Pacific War?

10. Were the War Crimes Tribunals in Japan a positive or negative aspect of of the Allied occupation?

German reparations for World War Two - in response to a question from Kelly

After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$20 billion mainly in machinery, manufacturing plants. Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953. In addition, in accordance with the agreed-upon policy of de-industrialisation and pastoralization of Germany, large numbers of civilian factories were dismantled for transport to France and the UK, or simply destroyed. Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.

In the end, war victims in many countries were compensated by the property of Germans that were expelled after World War II. Beginning even before the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents and many leading scientists in Germany (known as operation paperclip). Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion dollars.

German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POW's and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units".

Germany paid Israel 450 million DM in Holocaust reparations, and paid 3 billion DM to the World Jewish Congress to compensate survivors in other countries. No reparations were paid to the Gypsies who were killed during the Holocaust.

And why just stop at your pets? Why have ordinary kids when you can freak out your neighbours with these!

With HSC stress hitting some - I think it is time to revisit animal cruelty!!!!

The HSC isn't so bad is it!!! lol

Germany finishes paying WWI Reparations

By CLAIRE SUDDATH – Mon Oct 4, 5:55 am ET

World War I ended over the weekend. Germany made its final reparations-related payment for the Great War on Oct. 3, nearly 92 years after the country's defeat by the Allies. That's not to say that Germany has been paying its dues consistently over the decades; the country defaulted on its loans many times and the current payouts have only been happening since the 1990s. What took Germany so long to pay for the war? Didn't World War I end long ago? Does this mean we're all survivors of the Great War?

Not quite. Germany's last $94 million payment issued on Sunday isn't a direct reparations settlement but rather the final sum owed on bonds that were issued between 1924 and 1930 and sold to foreign (mostly American) investors but then never paid. The story of German reparations involves several payment plans, years of inflation, broken promises, canceled debts and a man named Adolf Hitler who flat out refused to give anyone anything. (See pictures of Hitler's rise to power.)

Signed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles - the formal agreement that ended World War I - stripped Germany of its colonies overseas and the region of Alsace-Lorraine (now part of France), placed restrictions on its military and levied punitive damages for supposedly starting what was, at the time, the most destructive war the world had ever seen. "Large parts of Belgium and France were so destroyed by trench warfare that they looked desolate, like moonscapes, just huge areas of land where nothing remained," explains Stephen Schuker, professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of American "Reparations" to Germany, 1919-33. "They needed money to help rebuild the area."

But how do you put a price on war? Is it the property value of destroyed buildings? Rounds of ammunition shot? The cost in human life? It took two years for the international Reparations Commission to assess damages in relation to Germany's national wealth - after all, the payment plan needed to be affordable - and decide how much the government owed. The first reparation demands were 266 gold marks, which amounted to roughly $63 billion then (close to $768 billion today), although this was later reduced to $33 billion (about $402 billion today).

That's a lot of money. So much money, in fact, that British economist John Maynard Keynes famously stormed out of the Paris Peace Conference and penned The Economic Consequences of Peace, arguing that reparations would cripple Germany's economy. At the time, Keynes' opinion was largely supported, though many historians today believe that while burdensome, the fines could have been paid. (See the top 10 national apologies.)

When it came time for Germany to make its first payment of $500 million in August 1921, it "just literally printed the paper money," says Schuker. "They gave it to the Reparations Commission saying essentially, 'O.K., here you go.'" In fact, Germany began printing money for everything. They printed so much money, knowingly devaluing their currency, that within a few years it "literally took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread," as Shucker puts it. By 1923, Germany had defaulted on its reparations so many times that France sent troops to occupy the Ruhr region in northern Germany to force them to pay. (It didn't work.) (Read TIME's 1923 article on the Ruhr occupation.)

In 1924, an American banker named Charles Dawes outlined what came to be known as the Dawes Plan - a new reparations agreement under which U.S. banks such as J.P. Morgan issued bonds to private investors on behalf of Germany, which agreed to pay them back when the money became due. Dawes won the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on this plan. But when the first batch of bonds came due in 1928, Germany again defaulted. So in June 1929, a new plan was enacted, floating more U.S.-backed bonds and reducing Germany's payments to $28 billion paid out over 59 years.

When Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, he cancelled all reparations. "So there are all these bonds out there, held by private individuals, that instantly become worthless," says Schuker. "American citizens lost a lot of money." But as David Andelman, World Policy Journal editor and author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today, points out, "refusing to pay doesn't make an agreement null and void. The bonds, the agreement, still existed."

In June 1953, at an international meeting that came to be known as the London Agreement, a fractured West Germany offered to slowly pay back some of the bonds on which it had defaulted back in the 1920s, but said that it wouldn't pay everything until the country was one day reunified. In 1995, no longer divided, Germany took up the task of settling all its debts. "The Germans just agreed to do the right thing, as it were," says Andelman, although he is quick to point out that the interest on the unpaid bonds is now so high that it has been adjusted downward many times. On Oct. 3, Germany paid off the last installment of interest, finally settling its World War I accounts.

Thai in Newtown with last year's Ancient class this Friday night

I am still full of Manila food, but they are worth the extra calories! lol

Just look for a beach ball wearing clothes next time you're at school. That will be me!!

I want to live in Bank World with Barbara!

Time to go home and leave Manila & the big room!