This summer, two middle school teachers set out on a project to develop their own curriculum about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 69 years ago.

Secondary sources just wouldn’t do, so Gary and Amber Malone, a husband and wife team from JHS 189 in Flushing, headed to Japan for three weeks to gather the material to create an authentic interdisciplinary unit about the bombing and how it is taught in Japanese schools today. A Fund for Teachers grant covered all their expenses.

Their goal, they said, is to encourage students to view historic events through “multiple lenses.”

“We want students to question everything and not simply ask, ‘What happened?’ but how and why,” said Gary Malone, who teaches English and is the chapter leader at JHS 189.

The Malones interviewed survivor Seiko Ikeda, who was 13 at the time of the bombing. She described to them 15 cosmetic surgeries to “get my face back” and “fighting for over 69 years against the fear that death could take us at any moment.”

Now, without any seeming animosity, Ikeda travels the world supporting peace and an end to nuclear weapons.

“The interview was a humbling experience,” Gary Malone said.

While local elementary school teachers emphasized that their textbooks and lessons are based on a “peace curriculum” that includes stories of the bombing but with the message of not harming others, older students had another story to tell.

The Malones said one 11th-grader showed them his history textbook, noting that it had no mention of Pearl Harbor. Gary Malone said he corrected another student’s statement that “America was proud of the bombing” by explaining that the U.S. decision was made to end the war.

The Malones said that older students who had studied at U.S. universities expressed amazement at how differently the World War II story is told there. “In the United States, we learned more details — kamikaze pilots, Pearl Harbor, Okinawa,” one college student, Ai Kokunugi, told the Malones. “I was shocked because the atomic bomb was taught like it was a last resort and had to be done. I was not aware of any of this.”

Image

As the Malones sort through their many interviews and collected documents, the elements of the new curriculum are taking shape. Amber Malone, who teaches social studies, said the unit will include an opinion-based essay on the decision to use the atomic bomb, possible trips to New York and Washington, D.C., to compare and contrast the way we remember tragic events and honor those who died, and the suggestion to establish intercountry school connections via Skype.