Hiroshima mayor says Trump remarks out of touch with A-bomb reality
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui urged the president to visit the western Japan city to improve his understanding, saying he "does not seem to understand that once used, atomic bombs kill friend and foe alike and threaten humanity."
The United States in late June struck three sites in Iran with the aim of destroying the nation's nuclear weapons infrastructure, widening a conflict between Israel and Iran.
Trump said last Wednesday during a visit to the Netherlands for a NATO summit, "I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war."
The remark provoked an angry outcry from survivors in Japan who accused him of trying to justify what was the world's first use of nuclear weapons against a civilian population.
Matsui said he will invite Trump, via the U.S. Embassy in Japan, to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum documenting the devastation caused by the U.S. atomic bombing and to listen to the survivors' stories.
Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days of World War II in August 1945, killing an estimated 214,000 people by the end of that year and leaving numerous survivors to grapple with long-term physical and mental health challenges.
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