It was "a date which will live in infamy," President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared before Congress the next afternoon, and 60 years later, Americans are talking about that infamous event again. Not because the anniversary has inspired a thoughtful reconsideration of midcentury America's racist assumptions about the Japanese, or a review of the military and diplomatic miscalculations leading up to the debacle, or an attempt to address tricky strategic questions of isolationism vs. engagement. No, we're discussing Pearl Harbor because of the hype surrounding a technically brilliant but soulless movie.

Only in America could such a terrifying, humbling historical event become little more than a deus ex machina plot device, a thunderbolt from the blue that conveniently resolves a hackneyed romantic rivalry. Haven't we seen this before? Explosions, sinking ships, tremulous avowals of love ...? Oh yeah, now I remember -- but this time there's no iceberg.

To avoid giving offense to any group of potential ticket buyers, "Pearl Harbor" gives us a new, anxiety-free, "shit happens" version of the disaster, a no-fault view exemplified by the movie's portrayal of Adm. Husband Kimmel, the senior Navy commander in Hawaii. In the movie, Kimmel -- a dark, stooped, doughy figure in real life -- becomes a clean-cut, prow-faced golden boy who had all the right instincts, but was somehow helpless to escape his destiny. Like all the other pretty heroes and heroines in the movie, Kimmel ended up as a blameless victim of, like, you know, fate.

In contrast, most of the long history of Pearl Harbor revisionism has concerned itself with nailing a scapegoat. The sheer scale of the screwup guaranteed that shrapnel dodging and finger-pointing would ensue, and it became a matter of some political desperation to name one person or group of persons who could take the rap and -- not incidentally -- let the rest of America off the hook.

The most persistent of the various mythologies that grew out of this frantic buck passing was the belief that FDR not only deliberately provoked the Japanese attack but knew when and where it would occur. The story goes that FDR deliberately kept that information from his commanders in Hawaii so the attack would sway American public opinion from its intransigent isolationism. (No one has quite explained how being alert and prepared to beat off the attack would have significantly diminished its political effect.)

The "FDR knew" conspiracy theory was revived again last week in a tendentious article in the New York Press by the left-wing contrarian Alexander Cockburn, who also revives the usual dishonest rhetorical habits of FDR's accusers. Cockburn cites, for example, a 1999 article in Naval History magazine that claims to "prove" FDR's prior knowledge by citing the fact that the Red Cross secretly ordered large quantities of medical supplies to be sent to the West Coast and shipped extra medical personnel to Hawaii before the attack.

These facts, like so many of those cited as proof of FDR's vile plot, can be explained quite readily without resort to the idea of a conspiracy. FDR had pledged to keep America out of foreign wars. At the same time, he was aware that our diplomatic efforts with the Japanese were only likely to buy us time, not permanently prevent war. No responsible leader could neglect the responsibility to be ready for any eventuality, but FDR also wouldn't have wanted the press to become aware of the necessary preparations. That would have been a political disaster and might have derailed his effort to quietly enhance our capabilities before war broke out.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"