Japanese PM Shinzo Abe under pressure from right-wing to offer no apology during Pearl Harbour visit
It has been suggested Abe needs to make a new and significant expression of regret after US President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday that Abe’s two-day visit to Hawaii from December 26 would be for “consoling the souls of the war dead, not for an apology,” but an editorial in the Asahi newspaper said the Japanese leader should use the occasion to “vow never to resort to the use of arms based on genuine remorse for rushing into a reckless war”.
Tens of thousands of civilians died in Hiroshima ... there is no need for any apology
It has also been suggested that Abe needs to make a new and significant expression of regret given that President Barack Obama in May became the first sitting US leader to visit Hiroshima and pay his respects to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945.
“Why should Abe apologise?” asked Hiromichi Moteki, acting chairman of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
Moteki insisted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was not the start of the war with America as hostilities had effectively commenced in July, when Washington imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tokyo.
He is also angered at suggestions that Japan carried out a “sneak attack” against the US in Hawaii and insists that the failure to deliver a declaration of war to the US government until after the attack had commenced was simply a result of the “ineffectiveness” of Foreign Ministry officials.
Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, agreed Abe should not apologise when he visits Hawaii “because Obama did not apologise in Hiroshima”.