Donald Trump should visit Hiroshima to see firsthand the devastating effects of nuclear weapons, the mayor of that Japanese city said today, reacting to the US president’s comparison between recent US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

“It seems to me that he doesn’t understand what atomic bombings that take the lives of many innocent civilians (…) and threaten the survival of the human race represent,” Mayor Kazumi Matsui told reporters.

Mr. Matsumoto told reporters at a press conference in Moscow.
“I would like President Trump to come here to understand what an atomic bombing is and experience the feeling of Hiroshima,” he added.

The US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki on August 9 of the same month. These are the only incidents in history where nuclear weapons were used in wartime. Shortly afterwards, Japan capitulated, ending World War II.

Some 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki, many of whom later died due to their radiation exposure.

On June 22, following days of Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran, the US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities.

Shortly after, a ceasefire between Iran and Israel went into effect, ending the 12-day war.

“I don’t want to use the example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki, but it was essentially the same thing,” Trump said on June 25.

“That ended the war,” he noted at the NATO summit in The Hague.

His comments prompted outrage from survivors and a demonstration in Hiroshima. Last week, the city’s city council passed a motion condemning statements justifying the use of the atomic bomb.