Democratic Republic of the Congo

Iwo Jima

I chose Iwo Jima as my topic for Maryland History Day because I always wanted to know a little bit more about World War II. Also, any World War II topic fascinates me because I would like my knowledge on this major war in world history to grow until every detail is clear to me.

Iwo Jima relates to this year’s theme, Conflict and Compromise, because there were two sides in Iwo Jima fighting for their own goals. In America, they wanted to capture Iwo Jima for their goal to bomb Japan much easier with a base that is closer to Japan. In Japan, on the other hand, they wanted to protect their base so America wouldn’t have easy access to Japan. They both have a conflict over one island, so that relates to the theme. Also, the compromise ended up as an American victory and Japan lost Iwo Jima, then resulted in the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I conducted my research using several types of sources. One of the sources was search engines. The only one I used was Google. I also used other websites that had data on Iwo Jima. Some of the main sources were Worldbook Online, Student Resource Center Jr., Wikipedia, The Library of Congress website, the Iwo Jima website and the National Museum of World War II website. Some books I used were some books on Iwo Jima information and a book of real pictures taken during the Iwo Jima invasion.

I decided to do a documentary because most Maryland History Day participants choose an exhibit as the most popular of the choices, so I wanted to be limited to a few range of competitors in our group of documentaries. Also, I wanted to do a documentary because I wanted to make a video, so this will be my first video that will present our data in an animation. I constructed my project by first choosing a variety of war topics because they have the most topics on conflict. We then narrowed it down to something not to popular, modern, or old. Iwo Jima happened to be in World War II and it had a bit of primary resources on the topic. I used search engines, books, websites, etc. to collect data on my topic. Once all the information was filed, we will make the project using a new program that records, mixes, and creates videos to create our documentary and final product.