Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to Key stage three history with me Ms. Dawson.

Today, we are at our fourth lesson of a six lesson inquiry answering the question, when was the turning point in the second world war? Today, we are going to be looking at Pearl Harbour and the war in the Pacific.

If you've already done lessons one to three, well done, you're in the right place.

If you haven't, you need to do those first, before attempting this lesson.

What I'm going to do now, is get my head out of the way, so that you can copy down today's title.

Pause your video in order to do this.

Once you've done that, resume the video, and we'll get started, lets go.

And for today's lesson, what you're going to need is, some paper, a pen, a ruler, a pencil, and you're going to need the turning point table that you've been filling in for the previous two lessons.

You also need to make sure you're set up somewhere nice and calm and quiet, with space to work without distractions.

If you've done this already really well done.

If you haven't, you need to pause the video and go and get yourself ready to work.

Brilliant, let's get started.

So today we're going to be talking about a event that happened at a place called Pearl Harbour.

I would like us to start by taking a look at this image.

This is an example of a propaganda poster.

So something that has been designed, in order to portray a specific political message.

What is that message? What can you see? Look for specific clues in the picture, pause your video if you'd like to, to help you have some time to look at it.

In a moment, I will give you some clues.

So one of the first things that we may have noticed, looking at this picture, is that there are bomber planes in the sky.

And those of us who are really, really observant, may have noticed that this bomber plane has got the Japanese flag on the wings.

So straight away, we're trying to work out what's happening here at Pearl Harbour.

We can see that the Japanese, are bombing from the air.

We also might have noticed this figure down at the bottom.

Now this is an example of where political symbols are used in order to try and depict a country.

So this picture down the bottom, this man who was dressed wearing stars, where have we seen these stars before? What country could this man be intended to represent? This is a depiction of the United States.

This is a cartoon character that sometimes referred to as uncle Sam.

And if you see anybody who is dressed in these kinds of stars, it's tends to be, that they're supposed to represent the United States.

So we can tell now that the event at Pearl Harbour, concerned Japan attacking the United States.

We can then use the text at the bottom.

This poster says, avenge Pearl Harbour, our bullets will do it.

So we may be able to see that based on a Japanese attack, America is going to attack Japan.

This is what we could work out from looking at this image.

So we have gone through quite a large amount of events from the second world war already.

So we looked at that initial period in 1940, where the Nazis gained control of Europe, really really quickly through that use of Blitzkrieg attack.

We then looked at the Nazis failed attempt, to gain air supremacy in Britain, over the battle of Britain.

We looked at British resistance, the blitz.

We looked at the reasons and consequences of the Nazis deciding to go and invade the USSR in the East, opening up this war in two fronts.

And today we are going to look at what's called the war in the Pacific.

So you may have noticed in the first lesson, that along side our access powers, we had Japan and alongside our allied powers, we had China.

This was called a world war, and there were a huge amount of countries involved in it that we don't always necessarily get time to talk about.

The war in the Pacific refers to the events that took place when the Japanese began to try and expand their territories in the Pacific, China being one of the countries they invaded.

And this is one of the things that brings the United States into the war.

There's a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

That's what we're going to look at today.

And then over the next two lessons, we will look at Stalingrad, D-day, and we will look at the end of the war.

So before we go on and look at what happened at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941, it's worth us taking a moment to think about what the world looks like, at this point in the war.

So December of 1941, the war has been going on for about two years.

On this map, there are colour coding used to indicate which countries have got control of which areas.

Can we work out what they are? Well done if you noticed that the red, was supposed to be the Soviet union.

So the red territory is areas controlled by the Soviet union and countries that they were directly allied with.

The blue on the map, are areas that are controlled by the Western allies.

The countries that are coloured in black, are countries that were controlled by the axis powers.

So Germany, Italy, and from September 1941 onwards, from Japan.

Let's take a look at Europe first, which is the circle in the middle.

Europe, as you can see, it is mostly coloured in black.

There are a few grey countries there that have remained neutral, but overall Germany and Italy have managed to take over pretty much most of Europe.

In blue they're on their own.

We can see Britain, but you can see that there have been, all of Eastern Europe has been conquered France has been occupied, Belgium has been occupied.

At this stage in Europe, the axis powers, look like they are winning.

If we then move over and look at this circle on the right hand side of the map, this is the war in the Pacific.

So, Japan had been looking to expand its power.

And in 1941, Japan started doing just that, and taking over European colonies in the Pacific, as well as parts of China.

So by December of 1941, all of these black bears here, this is how far Japan had got, in terms of expanding their power.

So once again, it does look like in Europe and the Pacific, the access powers are in pretty good control.

And that's the context of what world looked like in December of 1941.

So we know that our lesson today, is talking about a Japanese attack on a place called Pearl Harbour.

We need to know a little bit more about what that is and where that is before we can continue.

So Pearl Harbour was on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu.

So is an American territory on a Hawaiian Island.

The United States Navy was stationed there.

And it was attacked by the Japanese in December of 1941.

So it was attacked and bombed from the air.

This caused the United States to declare war.

And the United States declaring war on Japan, is very very important because this then meant that there was another major power involved in the war and they were involved in on the allied side.

So by declaring war on Japan, they were opposed to the axis powers, which meant that Britain now had another ally, in the United States on their side.

So that's very important for us to note.

Okay, so we know where Pearl Harbour is.

We know when the Japanese attacked it.

We need to have a little bit to think about why before we can move on.

So why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour? The background of this is economic issues.

And this goes as far back as the 1930s.

So one of the reasons why the second world war broke out at all, is because the world experienced a great depression in the 1930s, which gave rise to extreme governments.

This happened in Germany, it happened in Italy, and there was a military takeover in Japan.

So, what this means is that these countries that have been suffering with unemployment, job losses, rising prices, things like that, they need to find ways in which to improve their economy.

And one of the things that the Japanese decided to do, was to follow a policy of expansionism.

So expansionism is when a country tries to expand or make its territory bigger.

So Japan had invaded parts of Northern China, in order to try and take them for themselves.

And they had done this, knowing that there was a war going on in Western Europe, which might have kept those powers destructed.

However, the United States was not happy about Japan's actions of expanding into China.

It was very feared that Japan would keep expanding across European colonies in the Pacific.

So, or also American colonies in the Pacific.

So Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States all owned land on territories that was quite near Japan.

So they were very worried that if Japan was just allowed to expand into China, they'd set their eyes on American territories, or in French or European territories.

So what America did in order to try and stop them from doing this, is something which is called an oil embargo.

What this means is that America refused to trade oil with Japan.

So an embargo is like a banning of selling goods to somebody.

And this was really important because that's where the Japanese got most of that oil from.

And without that they would have really really struggled to, in terms of their economy and in terms of transport.

And definitely wouldn't have been able to continue conquering land in this area.

So the Americans thought that would stop the Japanese in their tracks.

What this did was caused Japan to think that America was likely to declare war on them soon, as refusing to trade oil with them is a type of punishment.

It's an attempt to control their behaviour.

So this made the Japanese fear that America was going to declare war on them.

So as a result of this, Japan decided the best thing that they could do, would be to strike first.

So before America declared war on them, they were going to attack them.

And it was going to be a surprise.

So this picture on the right hand side, shows you the plans for this attack on Pearl Harbour of December of 1941.

You'll notice that quite a lot of the attack is concentrated in one place.

This is where the US Navy had stationed their ships.

So the thought was, on the Japanese perspective, that what they would do, is that they would go when the Americans weren't expecting them, destroy loads of their ships, and therefore America would not be able to successfully declare war on Japan.

There was a very significant outcome of this Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

And that was, that it caused the United States in December of 1941, to enter the war against Japan, along the side of the allied powers.

So now the allied powers is much, much bigger.

We've got a huge economic power in the United States, and this may well impact the course of the war.

So now that I've explained to you a little bit of the details about the alliances, about what happened at Pearl Harbour, we can make a bit more sense of this image now.

So I need you to put your video on pause and to write up an answer, showing what this image shows and to use specific details from the image, to back up your answer.

You can use my sentence starters if you'd like, remember developed full sentences.

After you've spent a couple of minutes doing that, resume the video, and we'll take a look at my answer.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Remember your answer and my answer might not look the same, but that's not necessarily a problem.

My answer says, this image shows that the attack on Pearl Harbour angered America.

Details which suggest this are the man representing America, shaking his fist at the Japanese planes.

You may have written something different that could still be correct.

Give yourself a tick if you said anything about this image and indicating that Japan attacked America and that America was angry about it.

That's the gist of what we can see in this picture.

So I'm just going to talk you through a quick chronology of what happened.

On this map, hopefully we can see Japan in the middle there.

We can see China.

We can see along the bottom or just above Australia, we can see Netherlands Indies.

So this tells us, remember this is in 1941, 1942.

So this is land that is colonised or controlled by the Netherlands.

So what happened? What caused the war in the Pacific to break out? So in 1931, just at the beginning of the great depression, Japan occupies a Chinese territory called Manchuria.

So that's just here.

So this was part of the Japanese plan of expansionism, in order to try and help their country, in time of economic difficulty.

But of course, occupying Manchuria is effectively trying to steal land from another country.

So this didn't go down too well.

This continued to escalate until the point where Japan and China went to war in 1937, called the second Sino-Japanese war.

So this is the second time Japan and China had been to war over territory.

But this later developed into part of the second world war, war in the Pacific.

So the second world war doesn't break out in full till 1939, but Japan and China are already at war.

And then it becomes involved into world war two.

In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina.

We now know this region as Vietnam and Laos.

But in 1940, it was owned by the French.

So again, Japan had expanded into Chinese territory.

They then set their sights on French or European territory.

So this is now bringing them closer to going to war with the European powers, because they are expanding into European colonies.

Following this, this is when the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan.

So the United States have seen that the Japan are expanding into countries around them.

They want to stop them doing that.

So they stopped trading oil with them in 1940.

The United States also, placed more troops in these islands, which are called the Philippines.

The Philippines are now independent, but then they were occupied and colonised by the United States.

And this might give us some clues as to why Japan was so worried about going to war with the United States.

This territory over Philippines is quite close to Japan and the Americans could, if they wanted to, have mounted an invasion on the Japanese from there, that would have been a lot more convenient than from the United States.

So the Japanese started to get worried.

As a result of this, Japan decided they needed to strike first.

The feeling was that if they went to war with the United States, the only way that they could win, was if they launched a surprise attack.

So this little bit that I've circled here, the final bit is the Hawaiian Island that Pearl Harbour was on.

So the Hawaii is actually quite close to the Pacific.

So this was again somewhere that the United States had stationed military boats.

They had their Navy docked there, and Japan was worried that they might be able to sort of launch an attack from that.

So in December of 1941 with no warning, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, and this caused the United States to declare war and enter the war on the side of the allied powers.

Okay, so now we should have a little bit of a better idea of the events of Pearl Harbour.

I'm now going to set you off on your comprehension questions.

Question one, which country became a dominant country in East Asia? Question two, Why did Japan need to increase its income in the 1930s? Question three, why were the European powers worried about Japan's occupation of Manchuria? Question four, what did the United States do in order to try and limit Japan's expansion? Question five, when did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour? Question six, what damage did the Japanese attack cause? Question seven, what did the American president do the day after the attack on Pearl Harbour? And the challenge question.

Why did the Japanese want to ensure that their attack on the Americans was a surprise? And you can make use of my sentence starters to help you answer this question.

Remember, you might feel that you know the answer to some of these questions already, because I've gone over them in the video, but the detailed answers to all of these questions are contained within the worksheet.

So read it carefully before you start answering the questions.

Remember to try and challenge yourself and write in full sentences with historical detail.

Okay, you're ready to go.

So pause the video, read the worksheet and answer the comprehension questions.

When you're happy with your answers, resume the video and we'll go over them.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's take a look at my answers and see how you did.

Question one, which country became the dominant country in East Asia? The acceptable answer is Japan.

Well done, big tick if you wrote Japan.

A good answer is, since the 19th century, Japan had been modernising and industrialising and had become the dominant country in East Asia.

Great job if you used full sentences.

Question two, why did Japan need to increase its income in the 1930s? The acceptable answer is, the great depression.

A good answer using full sentences is, Japan suffered from the impact of the great depression in the 1930s.

There was rising prices, falling wages, and unemployment.

In addition to this, they had a rapidly increasing population.

Good job if you realised that there was more than one answer to this question.

So you need to make sure that you use multiple details to support your answer.

If you're not happy with your answer, you can pause the video and use my notes to improve yours.

If you are let's keep going.

Question number three.

Why were the European powers worried about Japan's occupation of Manchuria? The acceptable answer is, they were worried Japan would attack their colonies.

A good answer with more developed sentences is, the European powers condemned the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.

Britain, France, and the Netherlands, all had colonies in Southeast Asia and they were worried that Japan might attack them next.

Great job if you used full sentences.

Question four, what did the United States do in order to try and limit Japan's expansion? The acceptable answer is, an oil embargo.

A good answer is, in order to try and limit Japan's expansion in Southeast Asia, the United States enacted an oil embargo.

They also increased their military presence in the Philippines.

So again, very well done.

There's more than one answer to this question.

So if you used two reasons, great job.

Again, our answers might look different, it doesn't mean yours is wrong.

Give yourself a tick, if you've written anything along the same lines as me.

Question number five.

When did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour? The acceptable answer is, 7th of December, 1941.

A good answer using full sentences is, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December, 1941.

The first two waves attacked at 7:55 AM.

Great job if you used specific detail to support your answer.

If you didn't get the answer right, you can use my notes to correct yours now.

Question six, what damage did the Japanese attack cause? The acceptable answer is, it killed 2,400 Americans and injured 1,178.

A good answer with more detail is, the Japanese sunk five battleships and destroyed 188 aircrafts.

They also killed over 2,400 Americans, with another 1,178 injured.

Great job if you used specific statistics, to back up your answer.

Let's take a look at question seven.

Question seven, what did the American president do the day after the attack on Pearl Harbour? The acceptable answer is, declared war on Japan.

A good answer is, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the American president Franklin D Roosevelt, declared war on Japan.

As Japan was a member of the access powers, he also declared war on Germany and Italy days later.

Great job if you used full sentences.

Question eight or our challenge question.

Why did the Japanese want to ensure that their attack on the Americans was a surprise? The acceptable answer is, they were worried they wouldn't defeat the Americans.

A good answer with more detail is, the Japanese wanted their attack to be a surprise because they were worried about America's military power.

They wanted to attack the Philippines, but weren't sure that they would be able to defeat the Americans.

This meant that they decided to mount a surprise attack in order to weaken the Americans.

This was important because it meant that the Japanese were able to attack the Philippines without interference.

Really good job if you used developed sentences to support that answer.

That's the end of the comprehension questions.

It's now time for us to return to our turning point table and to think about, how the war has progressed by December of 1941.

Remember, this is all on you to make the decision.

I will not be modelling where the turning points are because otherwise, I'm doing the work for you.

At the end of this inquiry, I want you to feel that you have come up with the answer to the question all on your own so you can get some satisfaction behind it.

So I've given you the model for the very first lesson.

You should now have a completed row for May of 1941, after the blitz.

For November of 1941, after Hitler invaded the USSR.

And today you're going to put an entry in for December of 1941, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.

Why might this have made a difference to who was going to win the war? You can use the worksheet and your last few lessons work to help you.

So go ahead, put the video on pause and complete today's section of the turning point table.

Then you can come back once you're finished, for the next set of instructions.

Off you go.

Welcome back, great job.

So, you may now have an idea of where you think the turning points are in the war.

But remember, we've still got two lessons left to go.

I've not got an answer to module for you because you are doing that part of the by yourself.

Let's have a practise at writing up a turning point answer.

The extension activity question says, why might some consider the attack on Pearl Harbour, a turning point in the second world war? So why would some people say, everything changed after this event? Here is some support sentences to help you answer it.

On the left hand side of the table, there are sentence starters.

And on the right hand side, there are some key words that you can use.

You can remind yourself of some of the key information, the worksheet, even if you don't think that Pearl Harbour is a turning point, you need to know why some people may think that it is.

So use evidence to back up your opinion.

Go ahead, return to your work and complete the extension question.

After you've done that, resume the video and we can look at some answers.

Off you go.

Really well done, welcome back.

You've really challenged yourself today.

Let's take a look at my model answer.

A reminder that my answer might be different to yours, and that's not a problem at all.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, maybe considered a turning point in the second world war because it led to America entering the war.

Evidence to support this is the fact that the day after the invasion, Roosevelt declared war on Japan.

In the days following this, he also declared war on Germany and Italy because they were in an Alliance with Japan.

This was important because Britain had been pleading with America for support against Germany.

America was the world's most powerful economy and their support was a big advantage to Britain against the Germans.

Great job if you realised that the reason that Pearl Harbour was a huge turning point in the second world war, is because it caused America to enter the war on the side of the allied powers.

Give yourself a big tick if you wrote anything along those lines.

Again, remember my answer and your answer do not have to look exactly the same.

So great job on today's lesson.

That takes us to the end of our lesson on Pearl Harbour and war in the Pacific.

We've got two lessons left to go, before I ask you to tell me, when the turning point of the second world war was.

Hopefully you're starting to get a good idea of what that means.

Maybe you think you already know, but remember, we've got two lessons left to go.

I'll see you next time for lesson five.

Great job today.

Don't forget before you go to complete the exit quiz to test how much you've managed to learn today.

And you are very welcome if you would like too, to ask your parent or carer to share your work with us so we can see what you've been doing.

You can do this by asking your parent or carer to use Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational #learnwithOak.

Thank you so much, see you next time.