Nazi Saboteurs #2 Edited

I am nearing the end of Saboteurs The Nazi Raid on America. So far, a lot has happened. Dasch has been feeding the FBI information about the tactics that the saboteurs learned in the Quenz lake farmhouse, and remembered the chemical needed to make the invisible ink on the napkin show up, letting the FBI learn about the whereabouts of most of the men on the mission. All but two of the men have been arrested, and the FBI knows where one of them is, but has not arrested him yet, believing that he will lead them to the other saboteur.

Dasch himself has been arrested, and I found that ironic. I mean, why turn yourself in? You have about 90,000 dollars in1940's money (1.2 million dollars today), could live wherever you want in the United States, buy whatever car you want, and have a cover story and fake identity crafted for you. If he didn’t want to live in the United States, he could have went to Mexico, or somewhere in South America, the only continent untouched by the war.

In the middle of the book, it showed pictures of the Saboteurs in court, and an artists sketching of one of them being put in the electric chair. I am torn over if capital punishment was the right decision to make. They didn't carry out their mission, but they were here on the wrong pretense. If the government just wanted to set a point by killing them, in my opinion, it was the wrong decision. The way that the FBI found the men was because their leader had walked in on his own and spilled everything. The book even said that the FBI probably would not have found any of them if it hadn't been for Dasch. He believed that he would make it off with less of a punishment if he turned himself in. Now, future saboteurs would have to be stupid to turn themselves in.

I also think that the FBI was right to put Dasch on trial. They could have just let him go, but I think that they needed to show the other saboteurs that their demise did not come from within.

Capital punishment was not the only mistake that I believe was made during the fiasco. Mr. Hoover, the director of the FBI, was eager to announce to the public that the FBI had cracked the case, before the credit went to another government agency, such as the Coast Guard. If the FBI wanted to achieve a real victory, they would have kept the whole incident very quiet, and started to feed fake information to the Nazis. That would really be a victory worthy of praise.

Thinking further, it was actually quite greedy of Mr. Hoover was actually very greedy to let the whole world know that the saboteurs were captured. Countless American lives could have been saved if the Nazis were given fake information on the saboteurs. Greed works its way into every situation.

Social Action Picture Book #1

Article 1:
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/DrinkingAndDriving.html

This article was mostly information on the topic. It didn't give any personal situations. It is very hard to write a response on, as well as annotate on it.


Article 2: 
http://aevans.hubpages.com/hub/Drunk-Driving-Laws-

This article was told by a man who lost his father after a drunk driver rear ended his car at almost 100 miles per hour. His father was thrown from his seat to the middle of the car, and because of the impact, aneurisms developed and, about a year after the crash, exploded inside of him, killing him. He tried to explain how you should know your limits with alcohol and not be selfish, and take other peoples lives into your own hands when you get behind the wheel drunk.

Social Awareness #2 Two Voice Poem

Lights flash in the distance


I watch in awe

I watch in fear



People scream, louder and louder


I cover my ears, as the red, yellow, white and blue explosions light up the night sky

I cover my ears, as the orange explosions light up the dark city streets



The explosions get higher and higher


I have to move back to see them

I have to move back to stay alive



Suddenly all of the noise stops


I am confused

My stomach ties into a knot


The grand finale begins


I cheer, with the rest of the people


I find cover, with the rest of the people 

News/ Media Immersion #1

Source: http://gothamschools.org/2011/11/15/does-newest-class-size-data-confirms-increases-across-city/

Summary: This article tells about how NYC Board of Education Schools have average class sizes of 24 students, which is the highest that it has been since 1998. While these numbers are below what was originally expected after a 1.7 billion dollar budget cut, BOE officials say that getting the best teachers into classrooms is their main goal.

Social Issues: One social issue that is discussed in this article is how hard times affect everybody, including students. Since class sizes have been on the decline in New York for about a decade, this comes as a surprising fact to many people.


Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/16/whats-next-for-occupy-wall-street/?hpt=wo_r1

Summary: This article talks about how the Occupy Wall Street movement is unsure what to do next. There is uncertainty if the they want to become a political force similar to the Tea Party. The article also questions if the recent eviction was enough to put a dent in the movements spirt/ drive.

Social Issues: A social issue that is discussed in the article is that how all situations are complex. The movement calls for things like equal taxes, and for smarter ways of spending money, but in order to clean up the park that the protestors had made a mess out of, the city had to pay police officers and sanitation workers for their work, and pay for materials to help the cleanup.

Nazi Saboteurs #2

I am nearing the end of Saboteurs The Nazi Raid on America. So far, a lot has happened. Dasch has been feeding the FBI information about the tactics that the saboteurs learned in the Quenz lake farmhouse, and remembered the chemical needed to make the invisible ink on the napkin show up, letting the FBI learn about the whereabouts of most of the men on the mission. All but two of the men have been arrested, and the FBI knows where one of them is, but has not arrested him yet, believing that he will lead them to the other saboteur.

Dasch himself has been arrested, and I found that ironic. I mean, why turn yourself in? You have about 90,000 dollars in 1940's money (1.2 million dollars today), could live wherever you want in the United States, buy whatever car you want, and have a cover story and fake identity crafted for you.

In the middle of the book, it showed pictures of the Saboteurs in court, and an artists sketching of one of them being put in the electric chair. I am torn over if capital punishment was the right decision to make. They didn't carry out their mission, but they were here on the wrong pretense. If the government just wanted to set a point by killing them, in my opinion, it was the wrong decision. The way that the FBI found the men was because their leader had walked in on his own and spilled everything. The book even said that the FBI probably would not have found any of them if it hadn't been for Dasch. He believed that he would make it off with less of a punishment if he turned himself in. Now, future saboteurs would have to be stupid to turn themselves in.

Capital punishment was not the only mistake that I believe was made during the fiasco. Mr. Hoover, the director of the FBI, was eager to announce to the public that the FBI had cracked the case, before the credit went to another government agency, such as the Coast Guard. If the FBI wanted to achieve a real victory, they would have kept the whole incident very quiet, and started to feed fake information to the Nazis. That would really be a victory worthy of praise.

Blog Posts I Read November 14

I just read Eric and Aidan's blogs. It made me realize that I really need to stop writing really lengthly blogs about what I read. Maybe a brief retell, some text connections, or what I thought about what I had read.

I really liked the way that Eric had his post laid out. It was simple, clear and to the point. He managed to give a retell of the book, but had managed to inject his opinion and views into it as well. This is something that I want to work on.

Aidan was writing about a book that I read a few months ago, and he thought about it in the same mindset that I had. I found the book interesting because I was a mix of the two characters, in that I question a lot of what happens in life, but otherwise I just let stuff happen, and run its course. Either way, like both of the characters, I get things done.

Saboteurs The Nazi Raid On America

I haven't finished reading this book yet, but so far this is what happened:

A group of about 10 German men that immigrated back to Germany from America when the Nazis came to power are hand picked by the Nazi officials to take part in a sabotage mission against The United States. The men all go to a small lakeside home in the countryside of Germany. Two of the most important men are George John Davis and Ernest Peter Burger.

During about two months of training on various tactics of sabotage, such as writing in code, creating homemade bombs, and creating alias for themselves, the men gradually become masters of all of the characteristics required. The Nazi government creates fake birth certificates and gives each of the men about $90,000. From the small cottage in Germany, they are taken to Paris, and from there split into two groups. One group will take a German U-boat to Long Island to sabotage in the northeastern part of the country and the other group will take a different U-boat down the Florida, to sabotage things in the southern part of the country until the two groups of men meet up in Chicago, where there is a large population of German immigrants and strong support for the Nazi cause.

The book so far has largely focused on the group that went to Long Island.

When the group that was supposed to land on Long Island landed at about 1 am, the men quickly rowed to shore on a rubber dinghy. When they landed, they were dressed in German military uniforms, to avoid being tried as spies, which, if convicted, could get them executed.

The men quickly changed into civilian clothes, and to their dismay, found that there was a man holding a flashlight walking towards them. The leader of the group, Dasch, bribes the man with 260 dollars, and they get on their way to a train station. The men hide in bushes and change into civilian clothes.

The men get on a train that takes them to Queens, where they change out of their old clothes into more American clothes, and agree to meet up in Macys basement by 3 o'clock that afternoon, when most of the people in the city would be at a large military parade.

Many of the men go on a wild spending spree with the 90,000 dollars that the Nazi's supplied to them, buying things that where hard to come by in Germany, but easily accessible in America.

Skipping ahead, the two group leaders, Dasch and Burger become unsatisfied with their assignment to blow up factories in America. Dasch calls the FBI and tries to arrange an appointment with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington to discuss the Nazi sabotage operation. He heads off to Washington, fearing that if he went to the FBI headquarters in New York, the Gestapo would be waiting for him, as rumors were circulating that it was under observation by the German secret police. Burger was instructed to keep the other saboteurs busy while Dasch was gone.

When Dasch arrives in Washington, he does not get to speak with Mr. Hoover, but was directed to the head of the Anti- Sabotage unit.

After days of talking, and over 250 pages of single spaced records of what each of them had said, the two men were on very good terms with eachother. The FBI Anti- Sabotage director was almost sure that this man was the man that a Coast Guards Men had reported seeing on a beach in the early hours of the morning a few days ago, and had tried to bribe him. The FBI director was trying to keep Dasch talking until he could confirm that this was his man.


Reading this, it made me realize that we really haven't learned from our mistakes in the past. The problem in this book that allowed the saboteurs to enter the country was that too many government agencies were involved in keeping the country safe, and communication between them was not the best. The Navy combatted the enemy at sea, the Coast Guard controlled the beaches, the Air Force combatted the enemy in the air, and the FBI was in charge of protecting the country's interior.

In a similar case today, two different government agencies are in control of regulating your meal. Eggs that are taken from a farm are controlled by one government agency, and cooked and prepared eggs are controlled by another agency. The different agencies normally have tensions that run high, and causes one not to report problems to the other.

Under The Blood Red Sun

I recently read Under the Blood Red Sun. It is a book about life in Hawaii for a Japanese family shortly before and after the Pearl Harbor Attacks. Last year, I read a book on how Japanese people living on the west coast were put into detainment camps for most of World War Two, due to the government fearing that they might rise up in revolt and help the Japanese army if they invaded the United States. I had never heard of this before, and it really startled me that such a thing took place in the United States.

Tomi, the main character lives in Hawaii with his father, grandfather, mother and sister in a small house owned by the people that his mother works for. The family that his mother works for is rich, and has a son named Keet who torments Tomi for being Japanese. Tomi's father is a fisherman and Tomi's grandfather helps around the house. 

Since the family is Japanese in a time when tensions between the United States and Japan were very high, many people are afraid of or want nothing to do with them. Since Tomi's father is frequently out at sea fishing, Tomi's grandfather acts as a father figure to him. He talks frequently about honor, and not to disgrace the family by getting into a fight, or doing something very wrong in public. 

One day, Tomi comes home from school to find that his grandfather has just washed and hung his Japanese flag out to dry. Since many people are suspicious of Japanese at the time, Tomi takes the flag down and puts it back in its place inside the house. Tomi and his father keep and train pigeons to fly and race. When Tomi's father is out to sea, Tomi takes care of them, feeds them, and lets them fly. He is also a big fan of baseball, and Tomi as well as his best friend Billy frequently practice in a field. One morning, while practicing, many planes fly over them. Both boys notice that the planes do not look to be American, and they both become worried. Minutes later, bombs start going off and machine gun fire picks up. Both boys run back to their houses, and when Tomi gets to his, he notices that his grandfather is running outside flying his Japanese flag. He figured that if the Japanese planes saw his flag, and believed that he was on their side, they wouldn't bomb. 

Eventually, Tomi gets his grandfather to put the flag away. Tomi and his mother take everything that has to do with his Japan, a portrait of the emperor of Japan, traditional clothes as well as the flag and buries it under the house. Soon the bombs stop, and everything returns to normal until the night, when an army official comes to the door, asking them if they know any thing about a possible traitor that was flying a Japanese flag during the attack. Eventually the official leaves. In the morning however, two new army officials come to the house and have Tomi and his grandfather slaughter all of the pigeons, fearing that they are sending letters to the Japanese disclosing important information.

As the days go by, Tomi's father does not return from his fishing trip. The family begins to worry, since they can't contact him because he doesn't have a radio. Another thing that worries the family is that rumor has it that the army will shoot any boat that does not have an American flag displayed that tries to enter the harbor. The family knows that Tomi's father does not have a flag on board. 

Tomi eventually goes out looking for his father, and heads into town. He hears that Japanese men are being held on an island in the bay. During a storm, Tomi swims out to the island and finds his father. His father tells him that a plane started shooting the boat when he tried to enter the harbor. His crew member Sanji was killed, and he himself was shot in the leg. His father tells him to go home. Tomi did not see his father or grandfather for the next 5 years. They were both put on a boat headed for the West Coast to go to a detainment camp until the war was over. 

Reading this book introduced a new point of view on situations that seem very one sided. For one thing, when I used to think about Pearl Harbor, all I would see was capsized ships, blown up planes, and smoke. Now, I think past that and think of the affects that it had on peoples everyday life. It still half amazes me about the detainment camps, and that the idea was even thought of, but the other half of my mind does think that the detainment camps were a pretty obvious answer to a problem. If I saw people waving the flag of a country that was attacking my country, I would be pretty afraid, and I would feel safer if they were detained. 

Sometimes in this book, I felt that it was biased towards Japanese points of view. It sometimes made Americans seem like we were always in the wrong.