Japan Prime Minister Makes Landmark Visit to Pearl Harbor

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor with US President Barack Obama, commemorating the victims of Japan's World War Two attack and promising that his country would never wage war again.

    The visit, just weeks before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office, was meant to highlight the strength of the US-Japan alliance amid concerns that Trump could forge a more complicated relationship with Tokyo.

    Abe offered "sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place". "We must never repeat the horrors of war again, this is the solemn vow the people of Japan have taken," he said. 

    For his part, President Obama said that the alliance between the United States and Japan proves that there is more to be gained through peace than through war. "The presence of Prime Minister Abe here today reminds us of what is possible between nations and between people," Obama said. "In good times and in bad we are there for each other". 

    He told a small gathering at the USS Arizona Memorial, including some veterans who defended the US naval base when Japan attacked in December 1941, that the relationship between the war-time enemies had never been stronger.

    Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor with torpedo planes, bombers and fighter planes on the morning of December 1941, pounding the US fleet moored there in the hope of destroying US power in the Pacific.

    Abe became the first Japanese prime minister to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, built over the remains of the sunken battleship USS Arizona, although three others including his grandfather had made quiet stops in Pearl Harbor in the 1950s.

    His visit, three weeks after the 75th anniversary of the attack, follows a visit earlier this year to Hiroshima by Obama, who became the first serving US president to visit the Japanese city, where about 150,000 people are believed to have been killed in 1945 by a US atomic bomb.

Source: QNA