Abe’s Pearl Harbor pilgrimage underlines US-Japan tie
HONOLULU: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travels to Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, the site of a sneak attack by his country that provoked America into joining World War II, to reinforce what the leader calls ‘ the power of reconciliation.’
Abe will be hosted by US President Barack Obama, who quits office next month. That means Abe will soon lead Japan into uncharted waters, after incoming US president Donald Trump clouded the guiding stars of US- Japanese ties.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that Obama was pushing for and that Abe made the heart of his economic strategy has been torn up by the president- elect.
And, at least on the campaign trail, Trump has even called into question the US security guarantees that shielded Japan through the Cold War and later the rise of China.
In eight years, Obama – America’s Hawaiian-born first ‘ Pacific president’ – never made the headway he wanted in his vaunted ‘ rebalance to Asia’ diplomatic strategy.
But he and Abe chose a telling spot to celebrate US- Japanese partnership, 75 years after the ‘day of infamy,’ December 7, 1941.
Hawaii has a very multiethnic population with a very large Japanese population.
The Japanese sneak attack on an unsuspecting US fleet moored at Pearl Harbor turned the Pacific into a cauldron of conflict.
The attack had been prepared in secret by Japan for months, but was over within two hours.
Japanese warplanes came out of nowhere to sink much of the US fleet and leave 2,400 sailors and Marines dead.
A reluctant America was drawn into the war already raging in Europe and its colonies, a war that ended after US atom bombs razed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Post-war cooperation, however, has healed many wounds.
InMay,ObamavisitedHiroshima to pay his respects, and yesterday Abe will become the first Japanese premier to visit the wreck of the USS Arizona.
The leaders will head by boat to a white-walled memorial positioned over the sunken vessel, still lying
Stanley Chang, Democratic member of the Hawaii state senate
in the clear blue waters of the harbor where 1,177 of its crew died.
Only five of the Arizona’s crewmen are still alive and, while the memorial remains a tourist draw, in Hawaii the divisions of war have given way to a shared present.
“Hawaii has a very multi- ethnic population with a very large Japanese population,” Stanley Chang, a 34-year- old Democratic member of the Hawaii state senate told AFP. — AFP