text: No, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were well within range. \n\nSo also were Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, and Osaka -- the targets of firebombing campaigns.\n\nThe destruction of Tokyo was much worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Over 16 square miles utterly destroyed.\n\nThis was war on a scale beyond any the world could have previously imagined.  World War Two spread across the continents of the world, save North America and Antarctica.  Over fifty-six million people died worldwide.\n\nYour inane talk of bombing Hiroshima as a revenge for Pearl Harbor speaks volumes of your ignorance and dishonors the memories of all those fifty-six million men, women and children, soldier and civilian, who died in the greatest, most terrible war of all time, and the countless millions more who left the best parts of their lives on the battlefields of Europe and Asia.\n\nYou sure as Hell don't know sh*t about history.\n\nRead a simple table of world casualties.  I think you can do that.  Then stop and think.  Just try to think. Fifty-six million dead, more than twice as many wounded. Read some reports from European battles. Read about the Holocaust. Try to really wrap your head around how more than eleven million innocent souls were murdered by the Nazi butchers.  Read about the Baatan Death March. Read about The Blitz -- the 57 days and nights of German bombs raining down on London. Read about the Allied firebombing of Dresden which killed more people than all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.  Read after action reports of US Army forces who fought so hard in the bitter cold of The Ardenne to hold back the German bulge.  Then, when it begins to sink in, when you begin to get a handle on what you so ignorantly disregarded, then maybe you'll want to come back and apologize to the Greatest Generation, who gave so much and without whose sacrifices you and I would very likely not be holding this discourse.\n\nWW2 Casualties, Axis and Ally, Military and Civilian:\nhttp://www.warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm\n\nBaatan Death March:\nhttp://history.acusd.edu/gen/st/~ehimchak/death_march.html\n\nHolocaust Death Toll:\nhttp://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/numbers.shtml\n\nThe Blitz:\nhttp://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/blitz.htm\n\nDresden Firebombing:\nhttp://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm\n\nAfter Action Reports, 134th Infantry, 3rd Army, Ardennes, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg: (Note, these are in PDF):\nhttp://www.coulthart.com/134/aa-report-index.htm\n\nAND LAST BUT NOT LEAST-- to see it through the eyes of a soldier, I highly recommend the following.\n\nReflections of a Combat Infantryman -- A Soldier's Story of C. Co. 134th Inf. 35th Div. by James Graff:\nhttp://kansasguardmuseum.org/134inf.html\n\nYou can gain a world of insight through Graff's accounts, and when you read it you'll also be almost literally hearing the tale of my father's combat service, following the exact route of transit as Graff and fighting the same battles and battling the same cold and privations.\n\nDo yourself a favor, do us all a favor.  Take the time to learn what you're talking about.  You owe it to yourselves, you owe it to your families, friends and countrymen, and most of all you owe it to those who went before you and gave so much so you can be here now preparing the way for those who will come after you. Thank you.