Semester Duex, blog twelve

Dear President Obama,

I am pretty sure that you are aware of the fact that we are in a recession at this point in our lives.

As you know, the country is in debt and needs to focus on our own financial problems and less on

the financial issues of other countries. The marshal plan is a genuine attempt at stronger bonds

between nations, economic cooperation, and controlling inflation, but at this point in time, it would

be unwise to get involved with foreign affairs. In the past, this has cost Americans $11,820,700,000

in tax money in four years. This money could be going towards other things, such as paying off the

debt we are in, for example.

The plan was revolutionary when George C. Marshall first came up with it at Harvard University

in 1947, and it still is, but American needs to wait for her own problems to be settled and dealt

with before she can get involved with foreign affairs. According to ambrosedigital.com, "One

would need to multiply the program's $13.3 billion cost by 10 or perhaps even 20 times to have

the same impact on the U.S. economy now as the Marshall Plan had between 1948 and 1952."

In conclusion, things need to be done, and it would make a better country and a better world

to have international bonds and connections, but when it comes to the amount of money that

would be needed to help foreign places such as the Middle East and Africa, it cannot be done

right now. I hope you take this into consideration.

Sincerely,

Marlene Barajas

Semester Deux, Blog Eleven

To be honest, I think that power and money can pretty much take over anyone. I always wondered why Obama never did anything to keep his promises, and it makes sense that because he the power to do whatever he pleases, as the president of the United States, he would want to get more power and more respect. If I were president, I would like for the United States to not only close down Gitmo, but also to get out of the Middle East. I never really understood why the United States got involved in a war there, but from what I hear on the news about what people from the Middle East think about the United States, it makes me a little afraid to still be living here. For a while after Obama became president, I was afraid of him really getting our of the Middle East because I didn't want them to then come here and kill all of us to get revenge for all of the people that American Troops killed over there. As president, there are many things I wish I could do, but I would have advisers, to inform me as to what the correct thing to do really is. I would like for the Geneva Conventions to really have control over war all over the world. I would want there to be no nuclear weapons in the world. To accomplish this, I would like to meet with leaders from all over the world and make treaties. I would like for countries all over the world to get as involved with the Geneva Conventions as possible. Of course, these thoughts are a little unrealistic and childish, but I would like for the world to be more coefficient. It would be nice if different countries would coexist in this world. It would be nice to have people be more involved with the communities, so that they are more aware of what is going on in the world. Maybe if the news focused more on what is happening world wide and what it is that individuals can do about it and less on just how depressing and hopeless we all are, then maybe the world could be different. Maybe I would only offer certain benefits to people if they have proof that they have done service to the community or to the world in one way or another, but that is just a thought. If I were president of the United States, I would try to get the citizens of the country which I represent more involved and more giving.

Semester dos, honors blog

Dear Kiochiro Serizawa (relative in Japan),

I do not know exactly what I am doing here, but it is my second year here, in what my parents call the "internment camps" and I have been going to school here. My father used to be happy working in his farm and coming home to mom, my three brothers and I. Even though he studied to be a zoologist in college, he is happy with what he does here. Now it is like we are all trapped. I was only five at the beginning of the way, but I still remember how it happened. I saw the little neighbor boy run across th farm land and yell to my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I could tell by the expressions on their faces that this was not a good thing. I remember when the military police came to our house. The guys looked like teenagers. They were so young, and they were looking through our stuff. Later there were posters on the telephone posts that said that the Japanese needed to report. I saw that my parents were packing and they were taking a lot of clothes and eating utensils. We slept on cots stuffed with straw. We were living in barracks then. The floor had cracks in it. My little brother likes to pee in the cracks. He is also leaning to say bad words.

About three or four months later, we left the bay area on a train and left to a place called Topaz, Utah. It was in a desert. It was during the summer so the train ride felt really long and hot. When we were in the middle of the desert, the train stopped, and the military police gathered around the exits and held guns up at the people who were getting off of the train. My mother was angry. She said it didn't make sense that a lot of the people there were college graduated, intelligent people. They were supposed to be the leaders of the community, not the other way around. She herself was a UC graduate, so these arrangements made her very angry. There were about 100 of us at the camps. It was not a lot of people, but we were placed in paper barracks that were arranged in blocks. When we woke up in the mornings we would be covered in sand because of the sand storms. We were not protected by windows, because the barracks had no windows. This strange place turned out to be my home for three years.

We were cramped in little rooms with no privacy. This did not matter much to me, but the adults did not have any privacy. I became familiar to this place after three years, but I definitely did not feel attached to it in any way. My mom took us out for walks, and there were people there that missed the green of the Bay Area that were now trying to plant gardens. We go to sleep every day at 7:30. I had one brother that was born in the internment camp. She gave birth to him in a small hospital that they have here. When we got home, he was just a cute little brown boy that was just taking up more of our room to live in. I also had my tonsils removed at that hospital. It was very painful and they fed me orange Jello as my first food. It stung a lot. The doctors and nurses were all Japanese Americans that were also interned with us. The hospitals were also little barracks.

The room we lived in was probably twenty feet by twelve feet, and there were six people living in it. My father is a biology teacher here. He later left the camp to go teach Japanese to United States Navy in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He would send us gifts from the outside. In the camps we were a community. We were like a village where we looked out for each other. One time, a military police took me and another girl to a park outside of the camp, but I was afraid that he would not let us go back to the camp. For some reason, it seemed more dangerous to be outside of the camp than inside of the camp....

Sincerely, Janet Daijogo

http://www.tellingstories.org/internment/jdaijogo/index.html

Semester dos, blog ten

After talking to my parents and asking them what was going on in their life or their parents life during world war two, they did not have much to say about it. My mothers grandparents lived in a small town in Mexico. They lived their lives as farmers. They planted and sold bananas. My father on the other hand, doesn't know much about his grandparents. The majority of my parent's close family members, including themselves, didn't attend school. The women would begin doing house work at a very young age. They would begin at even the age of 6. In the boy's cases, they would begin to go out into the field to pick whatever they planted, which in my father's case, was mostly corn.

Mexico was not involved with the second world war and so they were not affected by the war very much. My cousins and I are the first generation to grow up in the United States, so they did not have too much to worry about in those years.

WW2 Imagery

In this picture, are the three allied power leaders, the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. It is interesting to think about the fact that whatever any of these men say goes. They were obviously more power during the war and had the other countries involved during the war under their power.

It is also interesting to think about the fact that millions of people in the world see these men as "the good guys." Yes, they fought for their country and they protected their people's freedom and safety, but they did it at the risk of the lives of others. Some might argue that the fact that the people they were killing were mass murderers, but all they did was fight fire with fire. They did a good thing by stopping Hitler and they simply had to get involved after they were bombed by Japan... right?

A study of commercial posters undertaken by the U.S. Government found that images of women and children in danger were effective emotional devices. This Canadian poster was part of the study and served as a model for American posters, by G. K. Odell. During 1941 through 1945 this poster was commissioned by Canadian government. The top right hand represents the "dangerous" Nazis, and the bottom left hand with Japan's rising sun represents the "hateful" Japanese.

It is kind of ridiculous how they put this picture. They know that most men can relate to this either because they have a girl friend and want a family with them, have a wife and baby, or simply see their loving mom in the eyes of this woman. It reminds me of Maria O'hare, because her concern is that families are being affected by the war.

President Roosevelt declared the date “A Day that will live in infamy”. Webster’s defines the word as a state of extreme dishonor. The United States was attacked without provocation, drawing us into a war that claimed many of our finest young men and women.

"Sailors in a motor launch rescue a survivor from the water alongside the sunken USS West Virginia(BB-48) during or shortly after the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor." (http://www.acepilots.com/ww2/pictures.html)

To me it seems like the photographer is trying to show something that is not really realistic. They try to make it seem like the United States navy, in this case, is he only victim. Hiroshima was many times greater and more impacting than Pearl Harbor was. Japan attacking a base, which even though it violated their peace treaty, this picture doesn't justify that the United States then bombed innocent citizens

Honors Blog

The main theme in Revolutionary Road was definitely the American dream. It tells the story of an average couple in the 1950's. They have two wonderful children, Frank Wheeler, the husband and one of two of the main characters in this book, has a decent job that pays the bills, and they live in a wonderful little house in the suburbs. The problem was probably that they thought too much of themselves. They were young when they got married and still had a thirst for thrill and adventure, which is not something that can hold together a healthy family. April Wheeler, Frank's wife, seemed to always want to find distractions. She wanted to find a hobby, or something that she was good at that would distract her from what she thought was a pretty pathetic life.

"It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God Damn mediocrity." This is a quote from April. The book begins with a scene at a play where April played an important role. Part way through the play, one of the characters messed up one of their lines, which brought the rest of the actors down and practically ruined the whole play. April was depressed and felt a strong desire to do something different with her life. She has realized at 29 that she is not where she wants to be and that she never really saw herself as a housewife in the first place. Because of this, distracts herself with different activities, until one day she decides that she wants to move to Europe with her family, where all the excitement is.

After an argument that Frank and April get into the night of the play, Frank desperately seeks an escape as well. Frank then decides to distract himself by having an affair with a woman from work named Maureen. They both have a feeling that they are dull and try to get away from that. They try to find a deeper meaning in life. They live their life believing that there is always something better around the corner, and somewhere along the way, they realize how unrealistic this is for a couple with children and a suburban life. They believed that "if you don't try at anything, you can't fail... it takes back bone to lead the life you want."

April and Frank's vanity and their strong desire to get something more out of life led them to both having affairs and eventually killed April. They were finally getting their old life full of thrill and excitement back when they began to make plans to move to Paris, France. They were forced to snap back to reality when April gets pregnant with a third child. They argue over whether she should have an abortion and things begin to get difficult for them. April is selfish and wants to lead a life that she cannot live anymore because it would be irresponsible for her to do so. Frank wants her to keep the child and is even considering forgetting about Paris after he is offered a promotion at his office job. They both begin to see other people from the stress of being with each other, and finally. April decided to have an abortion herself causing her to bleed to death.

April and Frank wanted what they could not have. They were not satisfied with the life they had and when it came to materialistic things and a popular social status along with an exciting life, they simply could not get by with what they had. They needed more to be happy, and their vanity brought them troubles in their marriage and ended April's life. That is why the theme of the American Dream is so important in this book. The idea that nobody is every really satisfied with what they have and that you can never have enough because there is always someone out there who has more will always be among American and the world everywhere.

"You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine percent of the people work things out..."