ABILENE, Kan. – December 7, 2016, marked the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II. IKEducation and the Eisenhower Presidential Library marked this occasion with a class of fifth grade students from Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School in Abilene, Kansas.

These landlocked learners were able to go on a live-streamed electronic field trip called “Remember Pearl Harbor: How Students Like You Experienced The Day of Infamy” to the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor where student reporters interviewed survivors and witnesses of the attacks. Additionally, students in this group–and others across the United States–submitted their own questions to historians and participated in live polls during the field trip.

Mitzi Bankes Gose, Director of Education for the Eisenhower Foundation, collaborated with Eisenhower Elementary School teacher, Dan Brown, to facilitate this meaningful learning experience. IKEducation gave students the book A Boy At War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor, by Harry Mazer, to read at school while they also conducted Google Earth projects to learn about the attack on Pearl Harbor prior to the field trip. During the field trip, IKEducation provided materials to help students connect the dots between the novel they read, the scene of the attack, primary sources referred to by historians, and the Eisenhower Museum’s exhibit about Japanese internment camps following Pearl Harbor.

This Electronic Field Trip was developed by the New Orleans PBS member station WYES and the National World War II Museum. Over 120,000 students and teachers participated across the country. To the delight of the class participating via IKEducation, one of its own student’s questions was chosen to be answered by a historian. The question was, “How long did the attack last?” Do you know the answer? About two hours.