Instead of reviewing Bella's HW, we had to work on completing it together as it was a test prep assignment. After, we focused on the war in the Pacific and the U.S. policy of "island hopping." We looked at the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and Leyte Gulf as well Iwo Jima and Okinawa. What did the Japanese kamikaze pilots do to U.S. targets? While Germany surrenders in April, 1945 - the fighting continues in the Pacific. Desperate to end the war. President Truman makes a bold decision. With the prospect of a million US casualties should they decide to invade Japan, Harry Truman decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima after a last effort to convince the Japanese to surrender in the Potsdam Declaration went unheeded. An added motivator for dropping the bomb was that it would send a clear message to the Soviet Union. Days after dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, the Americans dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. Combined, the bombs brought about the immediate deaths of 120,000 people with tens of thousands of more to follow. Debate still exists as to whether the US should have dropped the bombs. As a result of the bombs, VJ Day was declared, ending the war with Japan, but citizens continued to die because of radiation illnesses, and citizens of the two cities had a higher risk of cancer for the rest of their lives.