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Agence France-Presse

Under a warm Oahu sun, with the tranquil, teal waters of Pearl Harbour behind them, former enemies came together Tuesday to acknowledge the tremendous loss caused by the Japanese attack on U.S. military installations in Hawaii 75 years ago.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama made a historic pilgrimage to the site where the devastating surprise attack sent America marching into World War II.
Watch: Abe offers 'everlasting condolences' to Pearl Harbor victims

“As the prime minister of Japan, I offer my 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,” Abe said.
He did not apologise for the attack but said “we must never repeat the horrors of war again.”
Japanese PM Shinzo Abe under pressure from right-wing to offer no apology during Pearl Harbour visit
Japanese leaders have visited Pearl Harbour before, but Abe was the first to go to the memorial constructed on the hallowed waters above the sunken USS Arizona.
There, he and Obama placed a pair of green-and-peach wreaths made of lilies and tossed purple flower petals into the water. The rusting wreckage of the ship where more than 1,000 American service members are entombed can be seen just under the water’s surface.


Obama and Abe closed their eyes and stood silently for a few moments.
Afterward, they spoke at nearby Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam, where Obama called the Harbour a sacred place and said that “even the deepest wounds of war can give way to friendship and lasting peace.”
‘Death fell from the sky’: Obama pays tribute at Hiroshima nuclear memorial
“As we lay a wreath or toss flowers into waters that still weep, we think of the more than 2,400 American patriots, fathers and husbands, wives and daughters, manning heaven’s rails for all eternity,” Obama said.
In likely the last time he will meet with a foreign leader as president, Obama said the two countries are bound by shared interests and common values and their alliance is “the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and a force for progress around the globe.”

The two leaders greeted survivors in the crowd, shaking hands and hugging some of the men who fought in the December 7, 1941, battle.
The visit is powerful proof that the former enemies have transcended the recriminatory impulses that weighed down relations after the war, Japan’s government has said.
It’s a bookend of sorts for the president, who nearly eight years ago invited Abe’s predecessor to be the first leader he hosted at the White House.
For Abe, it’s an act of symbolic reciprocity, coming six months after Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima in Japan, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in hopes of ending the war it entered after Pearl Harbour.
“This visit, and the president’s visit to Hiroshima earlier this year, would not have been possible eight years ago,” said Daniel Kritenbrink, Obama’s top Asia adviser in the White House. “That we are here today is the result of years of efforts at all levels of our government and societies, which has allowed us to jointly and directly deal with even the most sensitive aspects of our shared history.”
In the years after Japan’s attack, the U.S. incarcerated roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps before dropping atomic bombs in 1945 that killed some 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.
Obama did not apologise at Hiroshima in May, a visit that he and Abe used to emphasise their elusive aspirations for a nuclear-free future. Nor did Abe on Tuesday.
No apology needed, said 96-year-old Alfred Rodrigues, a US Navy veteran who survived what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a “date which will live in infamy.”
“War is war,” Rodrigues said as he looked at old photos of his military service. “They were doing what they were supposed to do, and we were doing what we were supposed to do.”
Abe’s visit is not without political risk given the Japanese people’s long, emotional reckoning with their nation’s aggression in the war. Though the history books have largely deemed Pearl Harbour a surprise attack, Japan’s government insisted as recently as this month that it had intended to give the US prior notice that it was declaring war and failed only because of “bureaucratic bungling.”
“There’s this sense of guilt, if you like, among Japanese, this ‘Pearl Harbour syndrome,’ that we did something very unfair,” said Tamaki Tsukada, a minister in the Embassy of Japan in Washington. “I think the prime minister’s visit will in a sense absolve that kind of complex that Japanese people have.”
Since the war, the U.S. and Japan have built a powerful alliance that both sides say has grown during Obama’s tenure, including strengthened military ties. Both Obama and Abe were driving forces behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping free trade deal now on hold due to staunch opposition by Congress and President-elect Donald Trump.
Moving beyond the painful legacy of the war has been easier for Japan and the U.S. than for Japan and its other former foes, such as South Korea and China. As Abe arrived in Hawaii, Beijing dismissed as “wishful thinking” the notion that Japan could “liquidate the history of World War II” by visiting Pearl Harbour.
“Japan can never turn this page over without reconciliation from China and other victimised countries in Asia,” said Hua Chunying, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman.


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Shinzo Abe

Shinzo Abe offers ‘everlasting condolences’, but no apology, on visit to Pearl Harbour with Obama

Abe becomes first Japanese PM to visit attack memorial

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama (2ndR) pause after participating in a wreath-laying ceremony aboard the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, U.S., December 27, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama bow their heads during a wreath-laying ceremony aboard the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Photo: Reuters

Pearl Harbour visit shows Japan’s Abe has eyes trained on China and pacifist rethink

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offers his “sincere and everlasting condolences” for victims of the Pearl Harbour attack of December 7, 1941 as US President Barack Obama looks on, at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on December 27. Photo: Kyodo

In this December 26, 2016 US Air Force handout photo, US Army Brig. Gen. Spindler, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) deputy director, briefs Prime Minister Shinzo Abe(C) of Japan and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada(R) on the agency's recovery operations at the DPAA facility as part of his visit to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu, Hawaii. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Hawaii on December 26 ahead of a symbolic meeting with US President Barack Obama at the site of the Pearl Harbor attack. Abe's visit comes 75 years after Japan's December 1941 attack on the base of the US Pacific fleet, drawing the US into World War II. / AFP PHOTO / US AIR FORCE / Tech Sgt. Kathrine DODD / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO /US AIR FORCE / STECH SGT. KATHRINE DODD" - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS / “The erroneous mention[s] appearing in the metadata of this photo by Tech Sgt. Kathrine DODD has been modifi

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe under pressure from right-wing to offer no apology during Pearl Harbour visit

Shinzo Abe offers ‘everlasting condolences’, but no apology, on visit to Pearl Harbour with Obama

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Abe becomes first Japanese PM to visit attack memorial

Abe becomes first Japanese PM to visit attack memorial