Of course, this history, and how it is avoided in Japanese domestic politics, still poisons diplomatic relations between Japan and China (among others) to this day, so it is more than just an academic topic.
How did a thread about book banning veer off to Pearl Harbor?
It’s College Confidential. 
Perhaps it is relevant that different interpretations of history as taught in Japan and China influence domestic political attitudes toward each other, which in turn influence diplomatic relations.
Well it is Pearl Harbor Day. And we should remember.
The books have been reinstated. Other local news articles depicted the parent as a white woman with a biracial child.
http://delmarvapublicradio.net/post/banned-books-reinstated-accomack-county-school-board#stream/0
I may be misremembering what my kids told me. (Embargo vs blockade.) The real point was that there are other ways of looking at those facts. History books are often banned for not presenting a 100% pro-American version of history. I don’t think my kids came away with the sense that we shouldn’t have gotten into the war. (Obviously we should have been fighting Nazism far sooner than we did.) But it made very clear the point that history is written from the point of view of the people writing the history. I’m quite sure that the way children learn history subtlely influences the way they think about other people. I grew up in an era where we celebrated immigrants become American, parts of their culture may have been incorporated into the pot, but it was still a big melting pot. My kids were encouraged more to appreciate the differences. Pearl Harbor was a bit on my mind today I guess.
@alh: I have a view that in order for children to be able to place into context the social and political movements they will be asked to understand, whose facts they too often are asked to memorize instead of contextualize, they must be given a picture of what came before now; what today grew out of.
I was raised by a Southern Black woman for whom the memories of segregation and the fear bred into Blacks was so real she became extremely disturbed and frightened when we she was visiting and my husband would drive through neighborhoods bordering our own affluent neighborhood, those with quarter-mile long, winding driveways and brick-walled perimeters along densely packed tree-lined streets. (Think of W. Eugene Smith’s “Walk to Paradise Garden,” leaving room, of course, for vehicles to actually pass under the branches.)
As such, understanding her, and being sensitive to her, was essential. I could not look away from any of the things which hurt her if I was going to see and know her. Such is true of my being able to know my fellow Americans and neighbors. Of better understanding the nation we have built as Americans - I have not been able to look away from the things which hurt.
I do not turn away from exposing my children to the things which are less than savory, but discuss things with them, asking them what they feel when they are the only Black kid in the room and all eyes have turned toward them. I cannot think of a single piece of literature held as classic in this nation that I would not approve of my children reading as assigned reading, though I do have to say that viewing *Birth of a Nation *in the classroom before college would challenge me. I would probably pull my kids from class during such viewing and any follow-up.
Interestingly, oddly, and probably objectionably for many, my mother had little 45s of the tales of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, which she played for us for a period. Incredibly unkind to Black folk in how we are depicted, even with the revisionist view that there was some sort of homage to the resourcefulness of Black people embedded in the tales.
As I grew my own family, I found some copies of those tales and also read them to my kids. I think I had a cassette as well (done by Rabbit Ears Radio, I believe), which I don’t remember listening to. We always talked afterward, dissecting what had happened between the characters, and I told them the history as I understood it of those Uncle Remus stories.
I think that having the safe space of the classroom (how’s that for a spin on things?), wherein the texts can be used in guided facilitation by a skillful, prepared instructor - one who recognizes when to steer the conversation back on track and how to introduce the finer points of what will undoubtedly be uncomfortable points of language and interaction between the characters in the world in which they are presented - may present the first time many students have an opportunity to be challenged by such situations, confronted by them, and to deeply consider what they find there.
You should hear what our dinnertime conversations have been like, @alh. Unbelievable. All viewpoints, ideas, and subjects find their way in between bites. The dialectical is offered up for digestion as much as the meat I’ve burned each night.
I’m all in.
Waiting2exhale - Thank you.
Yes, that was enlightening, and generous of you to post. Thank you.
My D and her friends seem to have made a fetish out of reading “banned” books. One of her English profs even distributed a list of the most commonly banned books and suggested they read them.
@Waiting2exhale - after reading your post, I feel like we have had the most boring dinner time conversations.