What Are Atomic Bombs?

This article written by Barton J. Bernstein focuses on atomic bombs in general, but specifically the usage of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan towards the end of World War II. The article also goes on to talk about events that the author feels is lesser known in History, and goes into detail about what he feels like is a significant part of History that many people may not know of. More specifically, Bernstein talks about how the United States had a third atomic bomb that they planned to use prior to Japan’s surrender, and an invasion that was scheduled for Kyushu that never happened because Japan surrendered before the date that was planned for the invasion. Bernstein also talks about some of the things that President Truman …show more content…
Bernstein did not state and thesis and try to defend it, this article was mainly just him stating facts and retelling what happened. Opposed to coming up with an argument to defend. What I believe Bernstein was trying to do with this article was to talk about some of the things happening surrounding the United States dropping the bombs and Japan’s surrender that maybe few people were aware of and ended up talking about so much that he did not have a single main idea, or thesis, but rather he had several different smaller topics throughout his article. This article was more like a history book in that sense. However, most of the sections of the article had their own topic and defended it well, but overall there was no one single thesis statement. The structure of this article was broken up into multiple sections where he goes into detail about whatever topic he has moved on to discuss. However, it was hard to follow this article when the thesis was not clearly stated. If Bernstein did have a clear thesis, it would have been backed up extensively by all his facts. The title of the article “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory” is very vague, there could have been a better title to summarize the article a little bit better. It is similar to all of …show more content…
The article, for the most part, was enjoyable to read. The things that Bernstein mentioned such as the posable use of a third atomic bomb and Kyushu I did not know. This was a great article to use to get facts and information from, but however it did not have one clear main thesis to back up which to me made the article seem like it had several different topics all at once. There were several positive aspects about this article. I however felt as though the negative outweighed the positive. This was a very informative article with a few too many