Remembering Pearl Harbor

Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled the United States into World War II. Local Mountainside author Tim Benford wrote this article exploring the theory that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the attack ahead of time, a theory advanced by famed American historian, John Toland. Toland's book Infamy, posits the theory that Roosevelt knew, but chose not to intervene, because an attack by an Axis power would put the U.S. in a position to join the war "without having fired the first shot." As conspiracy theories go, this is a fairly repected one. Benford points out that this theory is disputed in Gordon Prange's two books, At Dawn We Slept and December 7, 1941 which suggest that a failure of intelligence and lack of preparedness allowed the surpirse attack to succeed. Benford himself wrote Pearl Harbor Amazing Facts which would be an excellent gift for history buffs this holiday season, especially middle and high school student who like non-fiction, military history and books of unusual historical footnotes and trivia.
Tim Benford provides articles for http://www.associatedcontent.com/.