Introduction

“So you see, time and time again, America has failed to do its duty which it owes to itself and to the world and consequently the gangster nations are threatening the very existence of this great republic,” longtime Korean exile Syngman Rhee told his audience gathered at the American University in Washington, DC, on 8 October 1942. In the months and years after Pearl Harbor, Americans wondered how their country had become embroiled in a war so suddenly and so unexpectedly. The “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor galvanized American opinion in favor of involvement in the war, but it also raised questions about how their political and military leaders could have been so unprepared. Into this breach stepped conspiracy theorists and cynics, who wondered if President Franklin Roosevelt had not left the defenses at Pearl Harbor lax, hoping for just such an attack....