The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invited U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to the Japanese cities devastated by the atomic bombings at the end of World War II in a letter they jointly sent him.

"We would ... be most grateful if you could visit the A-bombed cities and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings to fully understand the inhumanity of nuclear weapons," Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui and Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue wrote.

"We hope that you will break away from the nuclear deterrence mindset and take concrete action towards a world without nuclear weapons," the mayors said.

During the electoral campaign, Trump indicated U.S. allies Japan and South Korea could go nuclear if the U.S. military scaled back its presence in the two countries due to excessive costs. But Trump earlier this week denied he had made such comments.

President Barack Obama became the first sitting American president to visit an atomic-bombed city in Japan when he went to Hiroshima in May.