Being on a two week break has its benefits. This also being the anniversary of a number of WW2 (Pacific) events, I have spent quite lot of time watching the History Channel. Yesterday was a bit of a marathon; back to to back programs on the last days of all theatres of war in WW2. I've never seen a lot of the newsreel footage before, so it was just plain fascinating.
The same day's Daily Yomuiri carried the first in a series of articles on just who was to blame for the Japanese debacle in the same war. Quite reasonably, the authors lay the blame at the feet of Japan's military and political leaders of the period. There is certainly no point in encouraging revisionists in this country (or elsewhere) that Japan had some noble cause (destroying Western colonialism, no less) or that the Pearl Harbour attack was some perfidious American plot.
Alas, conspiracy theories doing the rounds have suggested that Roosevelt knew about the impending attack on Pearl and did nothing about it in order to bring America into the war. The stupidity of this theory is easily enough dismissed through plain common sense, not to mention the weight of historical evidence. I have never seen a conspiracy theory that offered anything other than false assertions or circumstantial evidence, so I guess thats why they will never be taken seriously. So why they hold such a fascination I don't know, except that, perhaps, they empower the believer in a similar way that members of esoteric movements do. 'I have special knowledge - you don't.'
Something like that.
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