Bombing of Japan

In WWII the United States did not join the war until Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. There has been much debate about wither the bombing was just or unjust. The Japanese did send us a letter which had the option to not drop the bomb if we sent the letter back in time, but Japan was also planning on dropping the bomb anyway. So this is why many people debate about the bomb dropped at Perl Harbor, but there is another bomb that is also equally debated about. The bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.



The United States had been building this bomb for years and now since they were in the war fighting Japan and trying to stop them they believed this was the perfect time to use the Atomic bomb that they have built. This type of bomb had never been used before and they did not really know the exact power of it. In fairness to the Japanese the United States sent a letter stating that if they did not surrender then the United States would go to much more drastic measures. One thing we did not do that could be considered unjust was that we did not tell them that it was an Atomic bomb. If we wanted them to surrender why didn't we just say that we had an Atomic bomb and if you don't surrender we will drop it? Even if after that they did not surrender then it would be just to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.



Many people argue that the reason for dropping he bomb was to intimidate Russia. Russia was one of the United States allies but we were not on the best of terms with them and did not agree with them. Russia was also a large country and could take over China and Japan if we did not step in and stop the war. So was the bomb to intimidate Russia? or was it to stop the war more quickly and lessen the amount of deaths in the long run? Also by dropping the bomb and stopping the war it saved Japan from being taken over by Russia. There has not been an agreement on this question yet, but you can decide for you self if a) the bombing was just or unjust and b) the bombing was to stop the war or to intimidate Russia.

If you have any opinions or questions you can comment on this blog post and I will try and get back to you asap.

Interview with Brenda York

I interviewed Brenda York on Friday March 7, 2008. It was great interview that I felt I really got a lot out of. Mrs. York was really into her career of art. She is really inspired and dedicated to it. Mrs. York's artwork is very original and fun. They are all brightly colored and have a Brenda York flare to it.

Here is the results I got from my interview with Mrs. York. Mrs. York started her artist career when she was a little kid. She was always making art and drawing pictures of her friends in class. Instead of paying attention in math or any other class besides art she would draw. Mrs. York also studied art throughout college. Her inspiration is Picasso who is a cubist. Mrs. York likes to take different features of a head and make them her own. She does this by placing them in different places or making them different sizes. Mrs. York has always enjoyed drawing faces. She likes to take an eye or a nose and rearranging it.
Mrs. York also enjoys the artists: Reed Carnel who is a teacher in town, Maxphil Parish and Richard Diebenkorn. Mrs. York’s favorite form of art is abstract. She told me “she likes art that makes her smile”; she does not like art that is serious. Art should be fun and colorful.
I asked Mrs. York if she had any helpful hints on starting an art piece because I know that I have trouble sometimes starting. She gave me wonderful hint for starting an art piece. She says that the reason why people get so intimidated with starting an art piece is the white canvas. The white canvas feels too blank and people don’t know where to start from blank, so she pants all of her canvases black first. This gets hers started with something simple and helps her not feel as intimidated. I thought that this was a brilliant idea and it made me feel like she really knew what she was talking about.
Mrs. York always knew she was an artist but she never knew how being an artist could be a job, she still isn’t sure. To help her get started she took graphic design which she was not crazy about. The graphic design soon led her to her artist career today. Mrs. York meets artists through galleries, painting classes, art shows and online. The best thing about art to Mrs. York is spending time with her daughter in her studio and having long talks also the other best thing about art to her is that it is her passion. Brenda York would paint even if it did not bring in money because she loves doing it and it makes her happy. I feel that that makes her a true artist, loving it and doing it even if it was not her job.

Mrs. York is an amazing artist one of my favorite art pieces of hers is "A Spot of Bother In the Garden" which is her version of Adam and Eve.

view more of Brenda Yorks art at her website: www.brendayork.com

Japan during WWII

In 1926 Hirohito became Emperor of Japan. Hirohito creates a "Peace Preservation Department" in 1926-1928. This presevation department limted peoples rights and freedoms and made the whole Japanese commuinty huge. Everyone is at the same level. This system prosecuted the local communitsts. After this new way of living and thinking Japan grew and expanded. This made them more powerful and larger.

Soon Japan gets into the expantion process and wants to take over China. The only problem was that Japan had no reason to attack China, so they plan a bombing of one of the Japanese railroad tracks that runs through China. They blame the Chinese for the explosion and attack. The area that Japan attcks is called Machuria which they declare their own and take over. Soon the Japanese enter Nanking, China in 1937. In Nanking they rape, mutilate and murder 200,000 to 300,000 people. This is around half of the city. This marks the beinging of the Sino- Japanese War.

The United States soon steps in and stops all of Japan's oil and military supplies and grants support to China. In 1941 Hideki Tojo becomes Prime Minister of Japan. Tojo says to the United States that if there is no agreement between them that they will attack. The Unites States does not agree, so the bombing of Perl Harbor happens on Decmeber 7, 1941.

This brings the United States officially into the war. Many soldiers are killed, and many battles fought. Through all of the fights and battles the Japanese were losing a lot of people and soliders but they were not giving up. The United States was obviously wining with three battles won out of five. The Japanese did not seem themselves as losing so they kept fighting. President Truman finally had to drop a bomb in Hirosima on August 6, 1945, and a second bomb on August 8, 1945 in Nagaski. Even with the bombing Japan does not surrender.

With everything falling apart the Emperor finally surrenders on August 13, 1945! August 15, 1945 was called V-J day- victory of Japan.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2129.html - this is a good website that I found if you would like to learn more about Japan during WWII.

Experiment in art

I have been experimenting with art for the past few weeks. I have kept an art journal and have been drawing sketches in it for about three weeks. I have a couple of pieces that I really like and feel I can turn into a real piece of art. While drawing these sketches every day I learned what kinds of mediums I like to use for art. My personal preference is using colored pencils. You make the shades of the colors light or dark depending on the amount of force or pressure you put onto the pencil. Also if you make a mistake you can somewhat erase it. I made an art piece related to a poem that I wrote and I did it all in colored pencil. I had darker colors and lighter colors and I blended colors also. I feel that I can do a lot with colored pencils, more than I can with paint. I did one of my sketches in my art journal with watercolor and I did not like the feel of the blending and how runny the colors were. I think if maybe I used acrylics it would have made it easier to paint a picture. I have really started to like art and have taken an interest in it.

This weekend I am interviewing an artist, Brenda York. She has a wonderful website and has made quite a living for herself. I am going to ask her questions about how she started her artist career and what her inspirations to paint are. If you would like to see some of Mrs. York's art I would suggest visiting her website; www.brendayork.com She is a very talented artist! I will also post the information I receive from my interview in a blog post next week.

I am really glad that I have been experimenting with art and paints because I have taken an interest in it. I may one day want to be an artist or just draw or paint for fun! We will see.

Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank is a diary that was published written by a 13 year old girl. It tells of her life being Jewish during WWII and the difficult times. I read a couple of passages from her diary and I found one quote that really stuck out to me. On page 63 she writes "Children coming home find their parents have disappeared While I was reading this expert I was shocked to find the things Anne Frank was talking about like the children or the rules that the Jewish had to follow. This quote is mentioned when Anne is talking to her diary about how terrible the day was. The reason why I like this quote is because I can relate to it. I can imagine being a child during the time of WWII and coming home and seeing that my parents were not there and did not eventually show up. This thought scares me and must have scared the children. I cannot imagine what life would be like with out my parents and knowing that they are never coming back. This is why this quote stood out to me and moved me because I can relate to it because I am a child with parents.

What did the children do once they knew that their parents were gone? Were they scared to go out and find a friend or someone to help knowing the Nazi’s could catch them? Did these children die, because of lack of care and food supply? Did they eventually get taken away? The children of this time are what really interest me about WWII and the concentration camps.

If you have any answers to my questions or you know more information about Anne Frank and would like to show me I would love to hear what you have to say! Just leave me a comment!

Equality!

Did you know that equality can mean something different to each person!? It does not always mean everyone has equal rights in society. The typical definition of equality is; the condition of being equal. Everyone in the society shares equally in society's assets. Meeting basic needs- employment, housing, education, health care- is highly valued. Look back at WWII and you can see that the views of the American's and the views of the Soviet's on equality are very different.

The Americans believed that equality is when everyone has the chance to succeed, when everyone is treated the same way by the legal system and when everyone shares equally in the material wealth and society. The last equality is not as important to the United States as the first two. Equality is very important to the United States, during the Cold War we made changes to the equality of opportunity and the equality before the law.

The Soviet's (Russian's) believed that equality in condition was the most important for a healthy society. The United States did not. The soviets argued that a society has to share its material wealth with its people so no one has an unfair advantage. During the Cold War they gave employment, health care and other necessities to their citizens. Even though they said that everyone got equal opportunity that was not true. The top Communist Party officials got the best housing, health care, automobiles and food before any of the other citizens. This was not equality!

I was surprised to hear about the difference in the views of equality from different countries, because when I think of equality I think: everyone is equal no matter what and we all have the same rights. In different countries this word may be defined as something totally different. If you have other words that you know that may appear or are defined differently in other places please comment on my blog and let me know! Thank You!

Art in the Interwar Era

My first post this week I wrote that Ernst and Margritte were realist artists, well I was wrong they are really surrealists. Surrealism is an expression of subconscious mind, a personal and cultural revolution, anti-war, anti-modern movement, irrationality was antidote of national thought. This type of art was popular during the 1920's and 30's. Some other types of art is expressionism, cubism, dadaism and precisionism.

Expressionism occurred during the early 20th century. Expressionism's characteristics are bold colors, distorted forms, two-demential, mood emphases over representation. The movement was encouraged by the social upheaval of WWII. Some artists are Kandinsky, Munch and Klee.

Cubism occurred from 1900's- 1910's. The technique of this art style is that it depicts objects/figures from multiple perspectives at once., subject in greater context, shallow depth of field, which meant intersection of subject and background, political in nature. Some examples of artist that used cubism are Picasso, Gris and Baraque.

Here are some examples of art pieces!

Cubism:

Expressionism:

I hope you learned a little about some of the art during the Interwar era!!

The Second Sino- Japanese War

The Second Sino- Japanese War happened in between WWI and WWII. It started on July 7, 1937 and ended on September 9, 1945. This war was a major dispute between China and Japan before and during World War two. Japan and China were fighting over control of the mainland. There were 35 million deaths for China and 1.7 million deaths for Japan. This was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. Japan wanted to dominate China politically to secure their resources. The start of the war was when a railroad was blown up which was owned by the Japanese. They blamed China for the whole incident. During the war the United States helped provide aid for China to help them fight against the Japanese. On December 7, 1921 Japanese attacked pearl harbor and brought the United States into the war. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki was bombed on August 9, 1945. Japan eventually surrendered to the Allied powers in August 1945. The victory of China cause Communism to become popular throughout Asia. This war a huge start to WWII and a huge dispute between China and Japan. Even today Japan and China do not get along.

This is a picture of armed Japanese soldiers during the war.

This is only a short summary on the Second Sino- Japanese War to find out more you can visit this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War I know that it is Wikipedia but it is very informational. It goes into great detail!

This is some really cool/weird art!

There are some really amazing artist out there. These artists all have their own form of art. This means they prefer painting in their own way. Some artists are cubist, realists, impressionist, etc. Some example of these artists are Picasso, Leger, Magritte and Ernst. Picasso and Leger are cubists which means that their art is created with shapes. For example Leger's "Le Remporqueur" is of a steam boat. You can not see it right away when you look at the painting, but once you look closer you can see stairs, people, a dog, trees and smoke stacks. It may not seem like a boat but once you break it down you can see the formation.

Here is Leger's "Le Remorgueur":

Margritte and Ernst are both realist painters. This means that their art takes reality and twists it. In Margritte's "On the Threshold of Liberty" you can interprit it in many ways. It is a painting of a cannon in side a box with windows of different pictures in it. What I interpreted from it was that the windows are what the world is like at that time, and that the cannon represents the war and the main focus is the cannon that war is the stand out of the normal world.

Here is Margritte's "On the Threshold of Liberty":

Thanks for enjoying this Post! keep looking for new interesting posts coming soon!

Claude Monet- art style

I have been reviewing over some of Claude Monet's paintings from the 18 and 1900's. Knowing that Claude Monet was one of the inventors of Impressionism really stands out to me and makes me feel like he is a talented artist. He started his own form and style of art and that is very impressive. I believe that only a unique artist can discover his own style of painting. Monet's paintings are very smooth and mixed together. The colors all go together and blend perfectly. Even though the colors are blended together you can still clearly see the buildings, trees, people, flowers, etc. He uses both strong lines and blurred colors in his paintings. He mainly uses defined lines to emphasize tree trunks and buildings. To show the the leaves, grass and flower petals he uses a cluster of colors to create a blurred vision. One good example of this cluster of colors is "Villas a Bordighera" which he painted in 1884.



I think that his use of colors and lines flow and stand out. He does not make the sharp lines look out of place or having the cluster of colors look randomly put in. It all flows and each style is used perfectly. You can tell the different styles of brush strokes that he uses in this painting. As you can see he does not make the buildings in the back very clear but you can defiantly tell what they are. You are never guessing what is going on or what something is in Monet's art.

I found this wonderful website that has a ton of Monet's paintings in it from the beginning paintings to the last ones. http://www.intermonet.com/oeuvre/index.htm
There are also many galleries that have Monet's art in it. If you want to see the real thing.

The Rainbow

I read a poem written by Leslie Coulson called rainbow. Leslie Coulson was a journalist and poet in the 1800's. He was also a solider in the first world war. He fought in the battles of Gallipoli and the Western Front. Coulson was born in Kilburn, England in 1889. He was sent to war in 1914 on Christmas Eve. He wrote his poem "The Rainbow" about his experience in the war. This poem gives great detail about what he was seeing and how he was feeling. He uses similes and metaphors to grab your attention. He uses a lot of adjectives to describe the horrifying things around him. He also uses repetition with the line "I thank the gods that ... are beautiful still." This line is really deep because he is saying that even though all these bad things are happening around him he thanks god that there is something beautiful that he can still look at. This poem is in a book that his father published after Coulson died in 1916.

Coulson wrote "The Rainbow" on August 8, 1916. He soon died on October 8, 1916 by a gun shot in his heart. The book that his father published was of Coulson's best work it was called From the Outpost and Other Poems. It sold 10,000 copies by 1917.


This is Leslie Coulson

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-rainbow-3/ if you would like to read "The Rainbow" here is a link to his poem. It is really moving and has great wording. I would recommend clicking on it.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was an artist during the Industrial Revolution. The paintings that he painted were called Impressionism. Claude Monet was a french painter. Monet painted mainly landscape pieces. One of his most famous pieces is "water lilies." He painted many scenes of the water lilies, close ups and far away scenes. His style of painting was a blurred brush stroke. His brush strokes were long and mixed together. Even thought the colors were mixed together and the brush strokes were blurry it was very clear to see what he was painting. Which most of the time was landscape, sometimes he would add people into his art. When he did paint people he did not put a lot of detail into the faces. The main detail was either in the clothes or the landscape around them.

One of Monet's paintings Impression: Sunrise influenced the name for the new movement of Impressionism in the 1800's. Monet's art was disliked in his early stages. But then he grew in popularity and his artwork began to sell in the 1880's. He was the first Impressionist who was known around the world, he made it all the way to the United States. One of his most famous series was at his home in Giverny, where he painted his Japanese style garden. He painted his most famous series "Water Lilies" and also painted in Giverny until he died. Monet liked to capture the wind, light, sun and the present moment in his paintings.

In 1890 he started painting in series where he would do the same painting but with different lighting and different atmosphere in each one. Monet exhibited many art pieces. He stuck with the art that he enjoyed through out the years and kept the Impressionist look. He was one of the only Impressionist artist who stayed with that form of art.

This website has many pictures of his and a great summary where I got most of my information from. http://wwar.com/masters/m/monet-claude.html

Art- Industrial Revolution

During the Industrial Revolution art transformed its self. It became more realistic and showed emotions. The art before the Industrial Revolution was called the Renaissance period. The reason why art changed during the IR was because it helped people escape from the depression of the factories and look at more beautiful things. The forms of art were Romanticism and Impressionism. These forms were very happy and care free and showed the wonderful nature that they all missed. The paintings captured the clear skies and the ongoing fields of grass in the country side. All of the people during the IR missed their farms and their homes away from all the factories.
Many popular artist grew from this time period, like Monet and Vangoh. Their art made people happy and forget the hard times. Monet's form of art was more impressionism because of his blurred brush strokes and light in his pictures. These artist became huge during this time period and are still famous today. It is amazing to think about how many things grew from the Industrial Revolution. We would not be the country we are today if it weren't for the IR.

This is one of Monet's pieces called water lilies. You can see the blurred brush strokes which make it Impressionism.

http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/impact.html - this website has amazing information about anything that was impacted during the Industrial Revolution. If you want to learn more I would suggest this site!

If you have any information about Monet's art or art during the Industrial Revolution please comment on my blog!

~ I hope that this could be of help for some people to get a little glimps of the art during the IR.

Women in the work place!!!

I have learned so much about the social structure and the gender changes during the Industrial Revolution. The only social structure or classes during this period were poor and rich. The poor people worked for the rich who got richer because they owned the factories that were earning money and the poor were getting payed very little. The factories would grown and grown as time passed and they would need more workers. They brought children to work in the factories and women. The days would be very long with people almost falling alseep while they work. This was dangerous and did not benifit the workers because they did not get payed that much more. Even when the workers went home it was to old shack houses with straw beds. Life was not that great for people who were working in the factories. When you would work in the factories you would do the same job all the time all day long. Same process over and over and over agian. This made life so much fun! Not really, people hated going to work but they had to to earn money.
My theory for the way that art connects to the Industrial Revolution is that inorder for people to break away from working in the factories they would do art. Either paintings or sculputers or drawings and they would try and sell them to the rich people for money. If it was good enough art the rich people would want it in their homes and would pay a desent amount of money for them. This was much better than working in the factories and you earned a lot more in one job. This is my idea of how the middle class got started during this time.
If anyone knows how the middle class really got started or has a comment about the art during the Industrial Revolution people feel free to comment on this blog post. Also if you have any comments about the structure in society or the gender roles also please feel free. Thank you!

First Blog

We are now starting a new project and lesson in class. The project is called [Art]ifacts. We are learning about different types of art and we are actually going to make our own paint! The making our own paint is the science part of the project and for history and language we are writting papers about the art and learning about the art periods. Right now in Hummanities we are learing about the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was in the 80's/90's and was the break through of new inventions. For example the cotton gin, the car, factories, the bicycle, etc. On wednesday and thrusday we are giving presentations on different subjects about the Industrial Revolution. My partner and I got the subject of the Impacts on the structure of the society and defining gender roles durring this time. This was a huge part of the Industrial Revolution because it changed peoples way of living and they got new jobs. The poor were still poor and living in houses that their bosses owned, so the wealthy were becoming wealthier. But despite all of that women started to work for their own money. Women would work in the factories, side by side with the men. Even though the women got payed less than the minimum wage man, it was a break through for them.
I think that the Industrial Revolution is a very interesting and huge time for our country. Many inventions that were made then are still used today, of course more high quality but the same idea is still used. This period of time for our country made us high end and well produced.
This blog that I am making is for students, teachers and people to read about what information I am learing about. This specific blog will be mainly about our new project and the Industrial Revolution. I will be posting blogs three days a week about something new I have learned. This will keep me more organized and other people to read what I am learning and hopefully learn off of my information. I hope that my blog can help you with whatever information you are trying to find about the Industrial Revolution!