Japan prime minister offers condolences at Pearl Harbor

Associated Press

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii

Under a warm Oahu sun, with the tranquil, teal waters of Pearl Harbor 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.

“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 apologize for the attack but said “we must never repeat the horrors of war again.”

Japanese leaders have visited Pearl Harbor 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 Harbor-Hickam, where Obama called the harbor a sacred place and said that “even the deepest wounds of war can give way to friendship and lasting peace.”

“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 Dec. 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.