Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbour in the United States later this month, The Guardian reported on Monday. An attack on the site in Hawaii by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941, killed more than 2,400 US armed forces members and civilians and marked the country’s entry into the Second World War.
Abe, who will visit the site along with outgoing US President Barack Obama, will hold talks with his counterpart on December 26-27. “I would like to show the world the resolve that [the] horrors of war should never be repeated,” Abe said in a statement. Washington also confirmed the Japanese prime minister’s visit, saying that it would “showcase the power of reconciliation that has turned former adversaries into the closest of allies”.
Abe said he hoped his trip would “comfort the souls of the victims” of the attack, The New York Times reported. The decision to visit Pearl Harbour was taken during a meeting with Obama on the sidelines of a summit in Peru in November, he said. The visit will also “send a message to the world that we will further strengthen and maintain our alliance towards the future”, the prime minister added.
News of the visit comes nearly seven months after Obama visited Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities which was bombed by a nuclear weapon in 1945. Obama said his visit, the first by a sitting US president, was “a testament to how even the most painful of divides can be bridged”. He was accompanied by Abe. However, Obama also clarified his trip was meant to honour the victims of the deadly war, and not to apologise for the attack that killed at least 1,40,000 people.
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