TIL Desk/World/Hawaii-Japanese Prime Minister arrived in Hawaii on Monday, one day ahead of his visit to Pearl Harbor, the US naval base attacked by the Japanese in 1941 resulting in the deaths of 2,403 Americans. The two-day trip’s main highlight is the visit to the USS Arizona Memorial with President Barack Obama, making Abe the first Japanese leader to visit the memorial to the battleship that was sunk on December 7, 1941.
The late Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida visited Pearl Harbor in 1951, but before the memorial site was built. Two other postwar premiers, Ichiro Hatoyama and Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, visited the US Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor in the 1950s, government officials have confirmed.
“Together with President Obama, I would like to express to the world this pledge for the future and the value of reconciliation,” Abe told reporters before leaving Japan. The visit comes seven months after Obama became the first sitting president to visit a park in Hiroshima dedicated to the estimated 200,000-plus people who were killed when the US dropped two atomic bombs on that city and Nagasaki in August 1945.
