How does returning an || statement work in java?

Question

I\'m new to programming so I have been working through the exercises at CodingBat.com. In the Recursion-2 section, there is a problem I wasn\'t able to solve (recursively) so I

Answer 1

return helper(start + 1, nums, sum1 + nums[start], sum2)
        || helper(start + 1, nums, sum1, sum2 + nums[start]);

returns true if either call to helper() returns true. Here is the same code written a different but functionally equivalent way:

boolean helperResponse1 = helper(start + 1, nums, sum1 + nums[start], sum2);

if (helperResponse1 == true)
    return true;
else {
    boolean helperResponse2 = helper(start + 1, nums, sum1, sum2 + nums[start]);
    if (helperResponse2 == true)
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

I put in a lot of unnecessary stuff for the sake of clarity.