Hiroshima’s Mayor, Kazumi Matsui, has strongly disagreed with the US president’s comparison of strikes against Iran to the 1945 atomic bombings of Japan.
Kazumi Matsui, the Mayor of Hiroshima, has publicly criticized US President Donald Trump for his remarks that likened American strikes targeting Iranian nuclear sites to the atomic bombings of Japan during the Second World War.
Mayor Matsui stated on Wednesday that Trump “does not fully understand the reality of the atomic bombings, which, if used, take the lives of many innocent citizens, regardless of whether they were friend or foe, and threaten the survival of the human race,” as reported by the Japan Times. He extended an invitation to the US President to visit Hiroshima for a better understanding of the events.
Trump’s justification last week for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities was that they were a show of overwhelming military strength, intended to swiftly resolve a 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran. This conflict was triggered by an initial Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
It is widely believed that Israel lacks the capacity to destroy Iran’s heavily defended Fordow enrichment site. The US deployed bunker-buster weapons from its strategic bombers to attack the facility. Trump asserted that the campaign had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and subsequently urged Israel to halt its military operations.
”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,” Trump said during a NATO summit held in the Netherlands.
The commonly accepted Western explanation is that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in approximately 210,000 deaths, forced Japan’s surrender, thereby preventing a drawn-out invasion and saving the lives of American soldiers.
However, historical evidence has questioned this account. A 1946 US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, and quickly launched an offensive in mainland Asia. The US conducted nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively, within the context of a larger bombing campaign. Japan announced its unconditional surrender on August 15, formally signing it on September 23. Subsequently, a pro-American government was established in Japan.
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