This is the story of the famous Doolittle Raid of April 18, 1942. This book calls it the "Halsey-Doolittle Raid," named after Commander William Halsey, Jr. With the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese believed that the war was essentially over. The Americans could not recover from such horrific losses, the Japanese thought. The Japan Times reported "With the imminent fall of Corregidor, the entire waters of the south-western Pacific will become an exclusive lake for the Japanese Navy, and all American and British Warships will be completely shut out. ... With the loses of their naval bases in these parts of the world, warships of the United States and Great Britain have been made into inglorious baseless vagabonds of the high seas. .... Most of them have been sent to the bottom by Japanese warships which have swept Anglo-American ships clean of these waters." Actually, this was almost true. The Americans needed to do something to restore their confidence. Therefore, Admiral Halsey planned and President Franklin Roosevelt approved of a bombing raid on Tokyo.