ABE PLANS VISIT TO PEARL HARBOR WITH OBAMA

TOKYO Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor with U.S. President Barack Obama at the end of this month, becoming the first leader of his country to go to the site of the Japanese attack that propelled the U.S. into the Second World War.

Monday’s announcement came two days before the 75th anniversary of the attack and six months after Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the memorial in Hiroshima for victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of that city at the end of the same war. Abe said he would visit Hawaii on Dec. 26 and 27 to pray for the war dead at Pearl Harbor and to hold a final meeting with Obama.

“We must never repeat the tragedy of the war,” he said. “I would like to send this commitment. At the same time, I would like to send a message of reconciliation between Japan and the U.S.”