INQUIRY 4: PLACE

Making the Place-to-Place Connection

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Newspapers to Use: All historic and current issues
Note: This Inquiry builds upon the place information gathered in Inquiry 3. Students work in teams of two or three.

Essential Question: How are seemingly unconnected places linked together by historic events?

Vocabulary: Place refers to locations in space and in time. Because historic events happened in certain locations, place is an important key to the past. When you think about place in terms of historic events, ask yourself "Why there?" Sometimes places are significant because they are strategic locations, because of their resources, or because of their climate. For example, early towns were often established by water or at a crossroads so that transportation, waterpower, and buyers for town products were easy to access.

Inquiry Set-up for Students:
The Central Exploration Office has sent an emergency message to all outgoing exploration teams. COMMUNICATION CONNECTIONS IN WASHINGTON STATE HAVE ALL GONE DOWN! In order to reestablish your signal and regain communication with your home state, you must find two historical connections between your exploration destination and someplace in Washington State. You may use all of the newspapers from all time periods for research information as well as any other research information you can find.

Your communication connection will be reestablished when you turn in a Connection Report stating:

1. Two historical connections between a place in Washington and your exploration destination. These descriptions must include the time period represented by the connection and why the connections are important. Note: If it is too difficult to find a connection between a specific destination city and Washington State, you may just use the country or region in general.
2. Where you found your connection information (newspaper, book, Internet site, personal interview, special organization, etc.). Make sure to use a standard means of listing your references (i.e. Chicago Manual of Style, Associated Press, etc.). Your Exploration Officer will determine the style format.
3. What object, if any, would best symbolize the connection between the two places?

For example, a Connection Report would look something like this:
Exploration Destination: Nagasaki, Japan
Washington Connection 1:
     The plutonium used in the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II (1945) was manufactured in Hanford, Washington. Most of the people who worked at Hanford did not know they were helping make a bomb.

Washington Connection 2:
     The Japanese American people who lived in Washington, some of whom were born in Nagasaki, were moved to relocation centers then to internment camps during World War II. One of the relocation centers was on the fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington. The Japanese American people were moved from their homes because Americans were afraid they would act against them since Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, home to one the U.S.'s largest naval fleets.

Symbolic Object: The plutonium bomb called "Fat Man."

Resources:
Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford. S. L. Sanger. Portland: Portland State University, 1995.

Exploring Washington's Past. Carmella Alexander and Ruth Kirk. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

Activity Plan: Teacher Directions
Step 1: Have students locate the Place lists they made in Inquiry 3. Have the class create one master list of Washington place names by listing all of the Washington names on the whiteboard. The newspaper years should be listed with the places so that they are easy to relocate by students who may not have been working with that particular issue. Students can use these names as a starting point for their Connection Reports.

Step 2: Student teams research their exploration destination AND Washington places, trying to find connections between them. Make sure you have enough research avenues available to your students. This will include Washington State history books, Internet access, newspaper sets, and even some knowledgeable parents or other teachers.

Step 3: Provide the students with an outline of what their Connection Report should include. You may use the example provided here or make up your own.

Step 4: Student teams complete and turn in their connection reports.

EALRs:
Reading 1.1-1.3, 1.5, 2.1, 2.3
Writing 1.1-1.3, 2.1, 2.2
Communication 2.2, 3.2, 3.3
History 1.1-1.3, 2.2, 3.2, 3.3
Geography 1.1, 2.3, 3.1, 3.3