Includes bibliographical references (pages 238-274) and index

"Ladies and gentlemen--the three men on the flying trapeze!" -- "An efficient Guerrilla Air Corps" -- The China Lobby -- Lunch at the White House -- Teach the Japanese a lesson -- "This Colonel Chennault, where is he?" -- The genesis of the Japanese plan for a preemptive strike -- "An economic blockade of Japan" -- "You need a hundred of these" -- "Keeping the thing quiet" -- Joint Board 355 -- Japan prepares for war -- Rangoon and beyond -- Reports in the American press of plans to bomb Japan -- Pearl Harbor attacked -- America's reaction to Japan's preemptive strike -- A postmortem on Chennault's plan for a preemptive strike on Japan

This book reveals the untold story of a secret plan that would have prevented Pearl Harbor, and maybe even World War II. Could a plan to bomb Japan and destroy Japanese supply lines, communications, and staging areas in China have averted the horrendous and devastating attack on Pearl Harbor? On July 23, 1941 -- some five months before Pearl Harbor -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt endorsed a plan calling for the United States to provide China with 150 manned bombers and 350 fighter planes to wreak havoc on Japan's growing presence in China. "Joint Board Plan 335" had been proposed to Roosevelt and his cabinet by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek; Dr. T.V. Soong, China's special envoy to the United States; and Captain Claire Lee Chennault, a retired Air Corps pilot now in the employ of Chiang. Such a preemptive strike on Japanese interests had been under discussion for several months. Although initially blocked by General George C. Marshall, the plan was resurrected in the spring of 1941. So why, then, was it never employed? - Jacket flap

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