Wars’ Lessons

The Gabfest club session was dedicated to the topic “Wars’ Lessons”. 
To start the conversation we remembered several war anniversaries observed in 2014 – the 100th anniversary of the WWI, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day, the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, etc. We watched and discussed several posters about the war and tried to formulate the lessons that were learned by the mankind.
 
The main part of the session was a presentation by WOA’s moderator Tamara about her visit to the US island territory – the Saipan island in the south Pacific. The story about a visit to the Northern Marianas allowed introducing the information about the 70-th anniversary of the Saipan battle. The group was presented information about a war hero Guy Gabaldon who was called the “Pied Piper of Saipan” for his exploits during the Saipan battle.  Mr. Gabaldon used his knowledge of the Japanese language to imprison over 1000 Japanese military and civilians. They were saved from the death at the “Suicide Island” as Saipan was called during WWII. We talked about the shift from military presence to tourism on the island.
The last part of the session was a chance for the new comers to introduce themselves to the Club and share their plans for the future that involves English – studying abroad, teaching English and others.
Number of participants – 15 persons.