A presentation to encourage community discussion will be offered by Rainy River Community College faculty May 5 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the RRCC Theater.
The program, entitled “Pacific War: Pearl Harbor to the Atomic Bombs” was pieced together by Joe Chlebecek, history and political instructor and Mark Rooney, art, psychology and sociology instructor.
Chlebecek said he plans to open his portion of the discussion with information about the current nuclear crisis in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
“I’m going to throw information out there,” he told The Journal. “There is still animosity out there surrounding Japan. It’ll be interesting to hear what people have to say.”
Chlebecek said emphasis of his half-hour presentation will be on atomic bombs and the major battles of Pearl Harbor. He plans to propose several questions regarding why the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor on a date that Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt said would live in infamy.
“This is the community’s college, I want to ask them some ‘what do you think’ stuff,” he said. “Why should folks today, both military veterans and civilians, be reminded about the significance of the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal; the rationale behind the U.S.’s island hopping campaign; the impacts of the campaigns to take the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa; and Pres. Harry Truman’s decision as the commander-in-chief of the U.S. to drop the atomic bombs on Japan?”
After teaching World War II history for 20 years, Chlebecek said that he is motivated by attempts to better understand the stories of the WWII generation.
Rooney will then steer the program in the direction of logic and answers to why people do the things they do.
“My wonder is when you have such mass killings, how do you get so many young men to take part in that?” he said.
In World War II during the British-American air war over Germany, about 26,000 men died in the skies over Hitler’s Third Reich. The battle for Iwo Jima cost 26,000 American casualties and 20,000 Japanese deaths.
Rooney, a Vietnam War veteran, will draw from his own experiences to answer questions which have confronted humans since the time of Julius Caesar. Why do men march off to war? How does a society get healthy, intelligent young men to sacrifice themselves in vast numbers?
“Caesar once stated men do these things because the women are watching,” he told The Journal. “Others believe it is about God and country, for money, for fame, or because they are more afraid not to.”
Rooney added that he urges members of the community to come with questions of their own.
“I’ll offer what I know, but we are presenting the starting point for a discussion,” Chlebecek said. “We want folks to contribute in ways that they think they need to be heard.”
