Help with Historical Investigation

[Vanessa_]

Hi, 

I'm currently in the middle of writing my Historical Investigation and I am having some trouble. At first I had trouble choosing a question and ultimately choose "how did the camps of interned Japanese to that of interned Jews during World War Ⅱ?". I was having trouble on how to structure my essay so I talked with my teacher and we decided upon doing the conditions in which the internees were kept in and the following paragraph would be about the treatment towards these groups which includes physical abuse and death tolls. In each paragraph I would be comparing how in some ways they were similar, but then comparing how they were completely different. I'm still unsure of whether it's solid enough. I'm having a bit of trouble being analytical in my essay, so far I just have some personal accounts and some statistics. Any recommendations on how I can more analytical? 

Thank you 

[Guest]

I completely understand where you're coming from, and it's a recurring problem I had with my own investigation and essays. Personally, in the end, I figured being analytical is just really saying how your evidence leads you to a certain line of thought. So basically 'X facts suggests that Y is the case because of Z reasons'. It's both creating a conclusion from your stats and info but also judging it a little, from what I remember.

So, for my topic about Kosovo and NATO's bombing, I don't know what I wrote but it might have been something like "There is evidence from -important person- that the NATO bombing was a method for the USA to exert its dominance in the international realm. -important person- describes the move as necessary in proving the USA to be a major power following the Cold War, a reasonable assumption given the frigid political atmosphere at the time. However, at the same time, -i.p.- may be using this excuse to..."

I can't give too much advice, but I hope this helps even a bit!

[Rey]

I think the best way to do it is to structure your paragraphs like this: FACT -> MEANING -> RELEVANCE. Essentially, what you would be doing is taking a fact from one of your sources. Don't forget to footnote it. Then you follow it up with a sentence or two about what this really means. So, in your case, you would have for instance the following sentence "There were x deaths of Japanese people in integration camps,(^footnote) while there were y deaths of Jews.(^footnote)" then you would go on to explain what this means "Out of the population of Japanese people in the camps, Z many precent died, while out of the Jews, the percentage is this much." here you are moving beyond fact telling and are adding your own thoughts to the essay. And finally in the relevance part, you can connect this back to your original question by saying something like "This shows that the death rates were similar/different"

Of course you would need to write more complex sentences with more complex facts... But I hope you get the idea, despite my awful example here.

[anishde]

I can see why it might be difficult after looking at your topic, because you'd simply wind up comparing and contrasting singular pieces of data, such as death tolls, involvement, and economic repercussions. Now, it's up to you to give the historical perspective on each issue, which will solidify your points after those initial comparative paragraphs (which shouldn't be the theme for your essay as a whole, simply an insight into what you'll be discussing later in Part B). So, for example, you may choose to structure it such that you get in the bulk of your information in earlier paragraphs, and then draw conclusions based on Result A in Japan vs Result B in Europe, or you may choose to mix the analysis in with the rest of your data points (which I'd personally recommend over the former).

Good luck!