HR: 1340h
AN: ED53A-0322    [Abstracts]
TI: Okinawa, Japan: Geologic Battleground
AU: * Waymack, S W
EM: swaymack@mail.colgate.edu
AF: Geology Dept Colgate Univ, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346 United States
AU: Carrington, M P
EM: mcarrington@mail.colgate.edu
AF: Geology Dept Colgate Univ, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346 United States
AU: Harpp, K S
EM: kharpp@mail.colgate.edu
AF: Geology Dept Colgate Univ, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346 United States
AB: One of our main goals as instructors, particularly in introductory courses, is to impart students with an appreciation of how geology has influenced the course of human events. Despite the apparent accessibility of such topics, communicating this in a lively, relevant, and effective way often proves difficult. We use a series of historical events, the Pacific island hopping campaign of WWII, to engage students in an active, guided inquiry exercise to explore how terrain and the underlying geology of an area can shape historical events. Teams of students are assigned the role of planning either the defense or occupation of Okinawa Island, in the Ryukyu arc, in a theoretical version of the 1945 conflict. Students are given a package of information, including geologic and topographic maps, a list of military resources available to them at the time, and some historical background. Students also have access to "reconnaissance" images, 360o digital panoramas of the landscape of Okinawa, keyed to their maps. Each team has a week to plan their strategies and carry out additional research, which they subsequently bring to the table in the form of a written battle plan. With an instructor as arbiter, teams alternate drawing their maneuvers on a map of the island, to which the other team then responds. This continues one move at a time, until the instructor declares a victor. Throughout the exercise, the instructor guides students through analysis of each strategic decision in light of the island's structure and topography, with an emphasis on the appropriate interpretation of the maps. Students soon realize that an understanding of the island's terrain literally meant the difference between life and death for civilians and military participants alike in 1945. The karst landscape of Okinawa posed unique obstacles to both the Japanese and the American forces, including difficult landing sites, networks of natural caves, and sequences of hills aligned perpendicular to the length of the island and to American troop movement. This unique topography forced innovative tactics ranging from reverse slope defense to "blowtorch and corkscrew" offense in response. During this exercise, students apply their map-reading and interpretation skills, as well as their critical analysis abilities; the historical context, in turn, provides motivation to refine those skills. Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare is based on deception. What we hope to communicate to students with this activity is that much of warfare, and, more broadly, the way humans interact with the world, is inherently and undeniably based on geology.
UR: http://classes.colgate.edu/kharpp/kh_webpage/Okinawa%20Panoramas/All_Okinawa_panos.htm
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0820 Curriculum and laboratory design
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005