Abe should also seek reconciliation for ‘trail of unspeakable cruelty’

On Dec 26, Shinzo Abe will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit Pearl Harbor, on which Japan launched a sneak attack on Dec 7, 1941, dragging the United States into the war. He will not apologize for the attack during his visit, as it is intended to “console” its victims.

Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister, wants closure for his country’s war past, and he is seeking reconciliation with the US. But by uttering no apology, Abe hopes to continue to keep the focus of attention away from Japan’s wartime responsibility.

In a signed article published in Japan Times on Friday, Kuni Miyake, former Japanese diplomat stationed in Washington, Beijing, Cairo and Baghdad, called China, rather than his own country, to heed Pearl Harbor’s lessons.

Miyake drew a farfetched parallel between China’s operations in the South China Sea and Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack.

“China is doing this – as Japan once did – in a manner at odds with the status quo and international consensus. The artificial islands it recently created in the South China Sea seem to me to be a Chinese version of the Manchurian Incident of 1931 – a pretext Japan used for asserting sovereignty over disputed areas,” Miyake said.