Oakland Unified School District
INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES
History/Social Studies
314 East 10th Street, Oakland, CA 94606-2296
Phone: (510) 879-8253 - Fax: (510) 879-8607
Preparing for the Spring, 2008 District World History Assessment
Dear Students,
Working with the practice documents below can help you prepare to respond thoughtfully to this semester’s district assessment question for world history. Below is the question you will be asked to answer.
Question
Evaluate the motives for Japanese imperialism in the first half of the 20th century.
In order to answer this question you need to understand two important words in the prompt – motive and evaluate. Motive means reasons. Evaluate means to judge or critique. Therefore, you are being asked to judge or critique the reasons for Japanese imperialism.
Before you can evaluate the motives, you need to understand what they were. You will learn these motives by studying the subject in class and by carefully reading the practice documents below and finally the documents on the assessment.
Once you have decided what the motives were, you need to evaluate them. Before evaluating you need to have some criteria. For example, if someone asks you if you liked the last movie you saw, you have criteria for evaluation. You could say yes because you liked the acting, thought the story was exciting, and it had a satisfying ending. Or you didn’t like it because the acting was terrible, the story was dull and you were able to figure out the ending way before the end of the film. In other words, you used the criteria of acting, a well told story and a satisfying conclusion as a way to evaluate the film.
In history, when you are asked to evaluate, you need to do the same thing. You need to decide what the criteria are for evaluation. Below are some possible criteria you could use to evaluate Japanese motives for imperialism. You may find additional criteria besides the ones mentioned below
Criteria
- Are the ideas or actions reasonable?
- Will these actions/ideas lead to progress or cause pain?
Use the practice documents below to fill out the chart.
Practice Documents
Practice Document #1
The basic principle of our national policy must be to acquire rapidly what we need to qualify as the champion of the East.
To overcome the current economic depression and to secure what we need to become the champion of the East requires rapidly expanding the borders necessary to maintain our sphere of influence.
Ishihara Kanji – “Personal Opinion on the Manchuria-Mongolia Problem.” May 1931
Practice Document #2
The first time I saw a Frenchman tied and bound, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Those people were supposed to be untouchable; they were so high they were like gods. And this man had his arms tied behind him. It made a very deep impression on me. We saw that a yellow race – the Japanese – had got the better of the white colonialists, the French. That awakened something in us. It made us start thinking.
Cambodian college student reaction to the Japanese occupation of Cambodia
Short, Pol Pot pg 31-32.
Practice Document #3
Actually, there will be one country acting as the champion of Asia and one country acting as the champion of Europe, and it is these who must fight in order for a new world to be realized. It is my belief that Heaven has decided on Japan as its choice for the champion of the East. Has this not been the purpose of our three thousand long years of preparation?
Okawa Shumei The Way of Japan, in Sources of Japanese Tradition pg 288
Practice Document #4
What all mankind wants is peace. But it goes without saying that peace can never last unless it is a peace in which all nations enjoy their proper place. In order to do this it seems to be natural that peoples who are related with one another geographically, racially, culturally, and economically should first form a sphere of their own for coexistence and co-prosperity and establish peace and order within that sphere…”
Arita Hachiro – “The International Situation and Japan’s Position” June 29, 1940
Activity – Fill in the following chart
Document / What is the main idea or action put forth in this document? / Is this idea or action reasonable? Explain. / Will this action/idea lead to progress or cause pain? Explain.#1
#2
#3
#4
OUSD 10th Grade History Assessment / Instructional Support Materials / page #1