Sample Article Review On Analyzing Assessing Realities

Richard B. Frank’s essay “Assessing Realities” is written to shed a light of perspective into the issue of what line of thinking went into the decision of Truman and his military advisor’s to use atomic weapons on Japanese cities at the end of World War II, and whether or not this was the ethical line of decision making for them to have made. As the author points out, American’s perceptions of the rightness of this decision has changed significantly since the time of the action, when far fewer Americans supporting this action decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki than at the time when it took place. The author shows that there are competing narratives believed as to why atomic bombs were ultimately dropped onto cities containing hundreds of thousands of civilian causalities.
If Frank wants readers of his essay to understand one thing it is that historically speaking, things are far from simple in this matter. The title “Assessing realities” is a telling one, since realities implies multiple narratives that one can believe surrounding a single action. He is able to demonstrate that there were no clear estimates as to both casualties and how long the US war with Japan would drag out. Some estimates postulated much higher casualty countries for both sides than the casualties that ended up resulting from nuclear weapons.
Likewise, he is able to support a claim that on the American end of decision making there was much doubt as to the though process of the Japanese. In the end, though Frank does a good job of presenting both sides—pro-atom bomb and anti-atom bomb—his essay leads a reader to the conclusion that using the atom bomb was the best decision given the information available at the time, and even in hindsight given the information we have about what was happening in that time period.