Japan’s Abe lays wreaths at Hawaii cemeteries
PM also set to visit site of 1941 bombing that plunged US into WW II
Shinzo Abe be the first Japanese prime minister to visit the memorial that honors sailors and Marines killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor President Barack Obama will join the Japanese leader when the latter visits the historic site
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii—Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe laid wreaths at various cemeteries and memorials yesterday ahead of a visit to the site of the 1941 bombing that plunged the United States into World War II.
Abe landed at Joint Base Pearl HarborHickam and then headed to National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, where he laid a wreath.
He stood for a moment of silence at the cemetery near downtown Honolulu, which is known as Punchbowl.
2001 collision
He later visited a nearby memorial for nine boys and men who died when a US Navy submarine collided with their Japanese fishing vessel in 2001.
At the Ehime Maru Memorial, he again laid a wreath and bowed his head.
On Tuesday, he’ll be the first Japanese prime minister to visit the memorial that honors sailors and Marines killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Japan’s former leader Shigeru Yoshida went to Pearl Harbor six years after the country’s World War II surrender, but that was before the USS Arizona Memorial was built.
Yoshida arrived at Pearl Harbor in 1951, shortly after requesting a courtesy visit to the office of Adm. Arthur W.R. Radford, commander of the US Pacific fleet.
The office overlooked Pearl Harbor, of- fering a direct view of the attack site.
Two other Japanese prime ministers have also visited Pearl Harbor.
Ichiro Hatoyama spent time here in 1956 and Nobusuke Kishi in 1957.
The Japanese Government confirmed the visits by Hatoyama and Kishi this week after a Japanese language newspaper in Hawaii pointed them out.
Closed to the public
The memorial will be closed to the public on Tuesday when Abe visits the historic site, joined by US President Barack Obama, who is vacationing in Hawaii with his family.
The importance of the visit may be mostly symbolic for two countries that, in a remarkable transformation, have grown into close allies in the decades since they faced off in brutal conflict.
At the same time, it’s significant that it took more than 70 years for US-Japanese relations to get to this point.
Abe won’t apologize for Japan’s attack when he visits, a government spokesman said earlier this month.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that “the purpose of the upcoming visit is to pay respects for the war dead and not to offer an apology.”
The visit comes six months after Obama became the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima for victims of the US atomic bombing of that city at the end of the same war.
Pearl Harbor survivor Alfred Rodrigues said on Monday he welcomes the visit by Japan’s top leader to Hawaii.