As most Americans and a few Japanese (or should that be reversed?) know, yesterday was the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor once seemed to be one of those few events in history that seemed impervious to my rule about there being no absolutes in history. The Japanese bombed us so we went to war. But historians have a way of screwing with even the most sacrosanct of national memories and it should come as no surprise that in the past six decades a few works have sought to, if not challenge then, shall we say, complicate the neat Capra-esque narratives of the Pacific War.
Writing in the New York Times yesterday, author and historian James Bradley, (Flags of Our Fathers and The Imperial Cruise) takes the long view when looking at the origins of conflict in the Pacific, blaming Teddy (not Franklin) Roosevelt for not doing enough to discourage Japanese imperialist ambitions in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War.*
This is territory Mr. Bradley has covered before in The Imperial Cruise, but needless to say all of this TR-bashing and attempts at historical myth-busting is sitting poorly with those who take a more orthodox view