I refer to the 75th anniversary article on Japan’s attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbour (December 7).
On December 8, 1943 Franklin Roosevelt arrived in Malta. He was the first US President ever to visit the island.
Among those accompanying him was General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander-in-chief Mediterranean.
President Roosevelt brought with him “a little token, a scroll, a citation” which he eventually presented to the people of Malta. The President explained: “I have signed it at the bottom and I wrote on it not today, but yesterday, December 7, because that was the second anniversary of the entry into the war of the American people.”
A marble tablet reproducing in bronze lettering Roosevelt’s citation is installed on the façade of the Palace in Valletta.