Perhaps because it's a round number, the 70th anniversary of Japan's assault on Pearl Harbor has given me the impression that more articles on it saw print than in the past, except for, as I recall, the 50th anniversary of the same.
Back in 1991, Japan's financial bubble had burst, but there was as yet little sense that its economy had lost its "juggernaut" momentum and the Japanese were anxious that the U.S. might grab the half-century anniversary of the "sneak attack" as another occasion to inflame the fear of Japan. That sense of Japan's unstoppable economic power is long gone now, on both sides of the Pacific. But "70 years have not dimmed the meaning and memory of that day," Dec. 7, 1941, as The N.Y. Times editorial put it.
Among the articles I read this time around, two stood out. One is Ian Toll's op-ed column for The N.Y. Times, "A Reluctant Enemy," and the other, Patrick Buchanan's in The American Conservative, "Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?"
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.