History/English BM Quarter 4 "What if?"

    For our forth quarter benchmark in english and history classes, we had to pick a point of divergence and change history through that one point. I focused on when President Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. My change is that he decides not to drop the bomb. Below are links to the magazine that I created in attempt to show this event through a 2011 lens and show how it changed our history.

    I really enjoyed the freeness of this project. We had a completely open range of topics and presentation ideas. It made it very interesting and also fun to be able to choose what we want to focus on. The most challenging part was definitely created primary sources and predicting what history would be like with this big change. Although this was also sometimes fun, it was also very difficult. The most interesting information I found was around the World War II and Vietnam War which I had to research extensively for my history changes.
    The actions of individuals impacts the historical record through the smallest change. In my project, I changed one specific decision in Truman's long life. Because of this one decision, history could play out entirely differently. One human, interestingly enough, can have an immense affect on historical record. Systemic changes impact the historical record in the same way. I focused a lot on how Japans community and economy change drastically because of this event. This then changes historical record to no end. This same important decision of Truman dropping the atomic bomb also affected the entire landscape of Japan. Had it been dropped, (which it really did) Japans environment would be entirely destroyed. They would have to rebuild up their entire community based on this one decision.
    My project could be improved by adding more editorials about each event and decision within my magazine. This would improve the debate aspect of my magazine and also help tell the story that I created from multiple views in more depth. If I could do this project over, I would have started my primary sources earlier. I spent over a week creating them because I felt the need for them to be super detailed and in depth. Obviously, I spent too long on them and then felt rushed in the last 5 days to create my magazine and editorials. However, I do not have any regrets. I worked hard and am proud of my final product.

Here is my Magazine

Here is a document with the primary sources I created which are also displayed in the magazine