|  In
this post-9/11 world, and with the fifth anniversary of that horrific
day having been commemorated, the Jersey City Free Public Library scheduled
Chad Millman, author of The Detonators, The secret plot to destroy
America and an epic hunt for justice, for his book reading and
signing at the Main Library, in the New Jersey Room on Tuesday, September
12th, the day after.
In 1916, the picnic area of what is now
Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ served as a storage and sales
distribution area for ammunition during the time period of World War
I. While the United States was officially neutral, German nationals
living here and their descendents born here felt a strong allegiance
to their mother country and believed strongly that their adopted ‘neutral’
country would not – and should not – be dealing in a munitions depot.
Nicknamed ‘Black Tom’ because the piles of black explosives resembled
a black tomcat, The Detonators recounts the sabotage at Black
Tom and the legal wrangling at the MCC, the Mixed Claims Commission,
where war reparations from Germany were decided at the end of World
War I.
This non-fiction book reads like a spy novel. It is riveting in its
detail and is a page-turner.
 This small
paragraph gives a bare-bones, yet vivid description of the Black Tom
saboteurs:
Within half an hour after midnight,
the three men had placed their ammunition
on steamships and barges. Kristoff then walked
away from Black Tom as easily as he walked on. Jahnke
and Witzke got in their boat and began rowing toward Manhattan.
Halfway back, they turned around to watch the fireworks.
In describing Black Tom’s early 20th Century terrorism on United States
soil, The Detonators reveals a naïve country, one that cannot fathom
another’s negative viewpoint of itself, with the desire to harm, as
well. This resemblance to the atmosphere of the early 21st Century terrorism
that has been experienced by the United States is especially striking.
(www.thedetonators.com)
(Click thumbnail for full-size photo and caption)
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