Hiroshima

In hope to gain more land in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific, Japan become allied with Italy and Germany. Japan found the United States was getting in the way of their goals, so the Japanese bombed a military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They bombarded a United States fleet and killed over 2400 men and sunk or disabled 19 naval vessels and 177 aircraft. But instead of stopping the United States from getting in the way of Japan's conquests, the bombing of Pearl Harbor propelled the US and Japan into a Pacific war. The Americans could not believe that the Japanese had the nerve to bomb their military base, and over the next four years, the Americans secretly sought a way of revenge.
             During the war, the people of Japan had created desperately optimistic rumors for themselves. It is almost as if they had invented a world of fantasy. But this world of fantasy was really a world of deception. The Japanese had convinced themselves that the United States would never bomb their beautiful cities, especially Hiroshima, since that is where the President's aunt was living. Even the radio broadcasters declared that Japan was winning the war.
             But the Japanese government lived in a world of reality where an attack by the US was very possible. So they began training 15-year-old boys to become fighter pilots without telling the public.
             By July 1945, the Allied Forces were clearly winning the war in the Pacific. And by August, Japan's troops had begun to retreat back to their home islands. But the people of Japan were told that the retreat was not because Japan was losing the war, but because they had almost won the war and they wanted to finish the battle on home soil. If the Americans ever followed the Japanese back to Japan, only under the condition of one last battle were the Japanese generals going to consider negotiating an honorable surrender.
             After the war in England finally ended in May 1945, the battle between Japan and the United States was still unresolved.