On The Pentagon Channel I was watching a show (USARJ This Week) featuring a man who told about his bicycle tour through Japan. When he reached Hiroshima, it was interesting to observe how he could not formulate how or why visiting the city was significant, but only that it was significant. He said it was an intense experience, "for many reasons" but could not formulate even one such reason, his eyes veering to the side at the point in his presentation where an example of a reason would normally follow the statement that there are "many" such reasons. He had been to the city four or five times, and each time it was new. A sentence or two later, he said it was great to have gotten here because it was an historically significant site and because this time, he got there by bike. Getting there by bike is a personal accomplishment. Okay. But why is the place itself significant? Of course Hiroshima is the first place a nuclear weapon was used on a hostile target, a place where tens of thousands of people were killed within a few seconds, but what is the significance of actually being there? We all know Hiroshima got "nuked." Why do we need to visit the place? What do we learn by seeing live the places we see in the pictures - the "Peace Dome" and the other memorials? The reporter noted that it is great to see how the locals have "preserved" the site, but the photographs show neatly kept gardens and lawns. The "Peace Dome" would appear to be a neatly kept ruin. None of it would appear to have anything to do with the carnage and destruction we see in the old photographs of a city flattened by a nuclear weapon. The reporter noted that he had learned much by talking to the locals, but he did not, perhaps could not, formulate exactly what it was that was he had learned.

He went on to remark that, "The best classroom is travel. You can learn more through travel than you can in the classroom." But I couldn't help but think that his lack of words, his inability to formulate, even in a prepared statement, what it was he learned in Hiroshima and why it was important, or pehraps his inability to question the cliché of "significance" and the assumptions we all carry around with us, may have reflected a lack of formal education, or the lack of a formal education that could be applied to this situation. This is not evidence that the reporter is uneducated. On the contrary, he knows much about the country, showed cultural competence in his various interviews with Japanese people, and speaks fluent Japanese. He is clearly of well-above-average intelligence, education and reflection. But that only highlights the problem here.

I tried to put my finger on exactly what it was that he just assumed we would understand about what it is he learned. Why did it seem enough to simply say it was significant and leave it at that? It reminded me of being at Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6th, 1994 - exactly 50 years from the moment the 116th Regimental Combat Team came ashore at the exact site of where they disembarked into withering machine gun fire. I went expecting some sort of emotional event or special insight. The exact location was going to be something magical, the round anniversary would somehow conjure up meaning. But it didn't. There were 50 or 100 people standing around in small groups. I saw a man carry an American flag into the waves "in memory" of his uncle who had been killed there, as he later said - a non-traditional form of remembrance which perhaps was also somehow intended to evoke an "authentic" experience. I could look up and down the beach and at the nearby hights and get a bit of a feeling for the tactical situation. I thought, "Gee, this really is vulnerable. No cover. Sitting ducks." But that seemed then and seems even moreso now to be a kind of banality that should not have required travel. Is the significance of being at the site simply that, a bit more insight into infantry tactics? So I can say, "I was at the exact location" and people nod their heads and think, "Wow!" But I can't help but think that the more astute listeners think not, "Wow!" but, "So?" So what if you were there at the very same beach exactly 50 years later? I am still not able to formulate what it was I expected to learn there. So what if you are standing in front of a memorial in Hiroshima?

What is in the magic of the place itself? What assumptions are hiding behind the, "Wow!"? I have serious doubts that it is so profound that language can not capture it. But does that mean it is all just vacuous?

One possible way out would be to formulate such experiences with active verbs and with overt references to the self: I saw, I felt, I went, I touched, I recalled or the site evoked, the people told me that..., etc. That would produce clear, living sentences which would connect the place, the visitor and his or her readers or listeners in a direct, clear way. Some things come to mind here:

- If we do this, we stop fishing around in our heads for abstract words which seem diluted or vacuous against the backdrop of the solid, real-life location. We don't speak in abstractions such as "honor" / "heroic" / "glory" / "grand" / "horrific" / "significant" / "profound" or "freedom," but instead look for more grounded ways to express things and perhaps feel the site. We experience it directly as a physical site. We stop aiming for the transcendental and settle for the sensual. After all, if what we're talking about is really so profound and transcendental, we don't need to actually be there, since it is divorced from space and time. If we're at a real, physical site, then we can talk about it in real, earthly terms.

- The teaching exercize I do where I try to get students to critically analyze memorials is a step in this direction. This belies my claim that what I teach is not memorialization, but is instead about memorialization. By having them step back and really look at these sites not holistically, but element by element, and forcing them to find vivid words for what it is they see, I am actually encouraging students to participate in the site in a way that may, in the end, make it more "significant" and more about authentically remembering. What starts out as an academic exercize aimed at achieving distance may in fact help in finding out what these places really do or don't mean for us.

Since I teach students who come predominantly from the military community, I am particularly interested in the attitudes of military students when humanities and social science classes go into issues directly relevant to the military situation: military history, death, killing, separation, etc.

My specific issue is this: I have an assignment I give in Western Civilization class for the unit on the world wars or as part of the complex on postwar and memory in my War and Society class. While many students have commented favorably on the assignment as such, I have been somewhat disappointed in my failure to provoke critical thinking.

THE ASSIGNMENT

Students find a war or genocide memorial near where they are located, thoroughly photograph it, and describe it. Those submissions are published at sites-of-memory.de (see the student section where some, but not all, of the student submissions are collected: sites-of-memory.de/main/students.html). When it is time for the discussion on the world wars and the west's first post-agrarian, nationalist-age encounter with mass death in battle, I post a thread for each student's project, including a link to that project. Each student is then to:

1. respond to his or her thread by posting a discussion/analysis of the memorial above and beyond mere description. This analysis should be informed by the issues raised in several lectures I post about modern war memorials. My lectures talk about how to interrogate a memorial site and how war memorials have changed over the past 150 to 200 years.

2. then go to the memorials and analyses other students have posted and comment.
A discussion ensues. They are graded on

a. the technical submission of their memorial project
b. the analysis
c. their engagement in the discussion

The website publishes only photos and descriptions. The in-class discussion is supposed to go beyond that and critically analyze memorialization.

LECTURES/INSTRUCTIONS

In the instructions and readings the point is NOT to inculcate some sort of anti-military ideology. I suspect, however, that any discussion of collective political/military memory and memorial culture has an undertone of such critique, since it goes beyond the simple acceptance of the common phrases of remembrance at memorials and ceremonies (only a leftist egg head would ask why we have an Unknown Soldier). The questions and issues they are confronted with cover a wide range. I do not expect them to address all these issues, of course:

- the development of military memorialization since 1800 or so from commemoration of battles and princes to individualized, equalizing memorialization of names and individuals of all ranks. Where does your memorial fit in here?

- the various portrayals of the human form, male and female, to evoke different emotions, clothing, uniforms, weapons, poses

- does the memorial offer a justification for the deaths it commemorates, either explicitly in text or explicitly through other signs?

- what kinds of imagery are used? Classical/pagan? Christian? Military? What do they mean?

- how are the dead listed, if at all? Does the order of their listing by some criteria reflect social station or military rank?

- what kinds of information does the memorial or cemetery show or tell about the fallen? What is "left" for the visitor to know about the dead?

- the portrayal of technology (weapons, vehicles), technical data

- how, if at all, are things like combat, dying and killing represented?

- how, if at all, is the political result of the war represented?

- is it mournful? triumphant? I offer examples like this: sitesofmemory.twoday.net/stories/4878624/

- might this memorial have encouraged or discouraged enlistment in later wars? (There is a possible anti-war implication there, obviously.)

- who, exactly, is included or excluded from commemoration? Soldiers? Civilians? Combat deaths? Disease/accidents?

- is the memorial typical? (not something I expect them to be good at)

RESULTS

Results are obviously mixed. In any group of submissions I will get all kinds of stuff. But, generally, in both their descriptions of the memorials and in their analyses, students are extremely resistant to anything above and beyond variations on these themes:

- simple assertions which are true in a way but do not go beyond the most basic idea: "This memorial was built to commemorate X."

- patriotic pathos: "This memorial reminds us of the sacrifices made for our freedom" (with no reflection on the political circumstances of the war in question) or "We can all be proud of the brave young men and women who gave their lives." I tell them the assignment is not to commemorate, but to study commemoration, but that is lost on many.

- vacuous rambling: "The obelisk is taller than most."

They might remark that "There is a cross on the front of the memorial" but sometimes even after questioning will not move themselves to make the simple observation that a cross represents something - anything! At some point, I would like to hear, "A cross represents sacrifice. Christians believe that Jesus Christ shed his blood that all men might have eternal life. A cross on a war memorial draws a parallel to this by reminding the viewer that the soldier citizen, as part of the body of the nation, shed his blood so that the nation might survive." But that is a fairly heady, intellectual response, of course. A simple reference to "sacrifice" or even a non-political, purely theological, "The cross reminds us of the Resurrection and gives hope to the mourners" would be good.

EXPLANATIONS

Now, why is there this resistance? I offer some ideas in no particular order:

a. Students of all stripes avoid abstract or critical thinking if they think they can get away with it. They are probably not even reading the lectures and are trying to "wing it."

b. Either my instructions are poor or for some other reason they simply don't "get it."

c. As military students this subject is simply too close to home. It makes them sad or angry. I had this at least once, when a student analyzed a memorial to a friend who was KIA.

d. A band of brothers: As military students they have, or at least think they have, special insight into this issue. They do not feel theneed to expound upon this issue with a civilian academic who does not share this insight. They feel they have nothing to learn here.

e. Any other ideas?

On b., I have avoided posting a clear example, which might be the problem. I am coming to the conviction that I probably should. "Here are three memorial analyses for you to study and copy: a war memorial, a military cemetery and a Holocaust memorial. Feel free to borrow ideas from these." Then, in those, I would write several pages each, going into each and every angle and image I can think of. On the other hand, I think that might intimidate them.
I would welcome...
- any comments you have on this whole project
- any explanation you have for what I have found so far
- any advice on how to make it work better
- any literature on teaching touchy subjects (war, politics, sexuality, race, religion) to students
- ...especially military students

============================
I presented some of these ideas and experiences in April, 2006 at the American Association for History and Computing online conference: Teaching military memorials online. A report from the trenches of a history classroom.