The Death of President Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt, months into his fourth term as President, died in mid-April 1945. His replacement, Harry S. Truman, former Senator for Missouri, was a machine Democrat. The American Air Force had begun executing a firebombing campaign of Japan that by the late summer of 1945 saw the near total elimination of Japanese cities unlucky enough to have a spot on what newspapers called Lamay's quote unquote, death list. Hiroshima was hit with an American nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945, killing as many as 140,000 people. Within 48 hours on August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and began launching its own invasion of the country.