Japanese PM visits Pearl Harbor

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave strong messages of reconciliation and alliance Tuesday at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Seven months after Obama traveled to Hiroshima to pay respects to tens of thousands of Japanese victims of the U.S. nuclear attack during the World War II, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Pearl Harbor, a U.S. military instillation that sustained heavy losses during a famous Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

After a formal meeting, the two leaders placed a pair of green-and-peach wreaths made of lilies aboard the USS Arizona Memorial, a wreckage of the American sunken ship where more than 1,000 American fallen troops are entombed.

Both leaders recalled the events at Pearl Harbor and praised the efforts to restore relations between Japan and the U.S.

"The United States and Japan chose friendship and they chose peace. Over the decades, our alliances have made the nations more successful," Obama said. “Our alliance has never been stronger. In good times and in bad we're there for each other."

Abe offered "sincere and everlasting condolences" to Pearl Harbor victims.

“We must never repeat the horrors of war again. This is the solemn vow, we the people of Japan have taken,” Abe said. "It is my wish that our Japanese children, and President Obama, your American children, and indeed their children and grandchildren, and people all around the world, will continue to remember Pearl Harbor as the symbol of reconciliation.”

Abe pledged he would “spare no efforts” to help reconciliation.

More than 2,400 American soldiers and civilians were killed in the Pearl Harbor attack that led the U.S. to enter World War II.