on of Poland. America's determination to remain isolated changed abruptly following Japan's"surprise attack" on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Military strategists and politicians poured the majority of American war effort into the European theater, and before the United States could fully mobilize most of South-East Asia had fallen to Japan, including the Philippines. Slowly, the United States recaptured the many small islands invaded by Japan, including Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. These the "Japanese forces waged a stubborn, often suicidal battles were ferocious; although the Americans won each, resistance."demolished the Japanese fleet and established air bases for (3) At the naval battle of Midway Island, America supporting conventional bombing. Under the guidance of President Roosevelt, a top-secret joint effort between America and the United Kingdom was begun to build an atomic bomb that could be used against Germany. Run by General Leslie R. Groves at locations such as Los Alamos, New Mexico, this program was fully known only to a handful of scientists and politicians. Truman learned of the project, then called by its code name S-1 (and later as the Manhattan Project), from Secretary of War Stimson on 25 April 1945(4), only after becoming President. Concurrent with the Manhattan project, both Japan and America were making preparations for a final all-encompassing conflict, which both sides expected would involve an American invasion of mainland Japan. The Americans expanded conventional bombing and tightened their increasingly successful naval blockade.(5) The Japanese began the stockpiling of aircraft, amassed a giant conscripted military force, and commenced the creation of a civilian army--who swore total allegiance to the emperor. This awe-inspiring army included "so-called 'Sherman Carpets,' children with dynamite strapped to their bodies and trained to throw themselves under American ...
