Japan's premier shows sympathy at Pearl Harbor

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- Under a warm Oahu sun, with the tranquil, teal waters of Pearl Harbor behind them, former enemies came together Tuesday to acknowledge the tremendous loss caused by the Japanese attack on U.S. military installations in Hawaii 75 years ago.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama made a historic pilgrimage to the site of the devastating surprise attack that sent America into World War II.

"As the prime minister of Japan, I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place," Abe said.

He did not apologize for the attack but said "we must never repeat the horrors of war again."

Japanese leaders have visited Pearl Harbor before, but Abe was the first to go to the memorial built on the hallowed waters above the sunken USS Arizona.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, and U.S. President Barack Obama speak with Pearl Harbor veterans, all seated from left, Sterling Cale, Al Rodrigues and Everett Hyland at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, Tuesday in Honolulu.Marco Garcia ~ Associated Press

There, he and Obama placed a pair of green-and-peach wreaths made of lilies and tossed purple flower petals into the water. The rusting wreckage of the ship where more than 1,000 American service members are entombed can be seen just under the water's surface.

Obama and Abe closed their eyes and stood silently for a few moments.

Afterward, they spoke at nearby Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, where Obama called the harbor a sacred place and said "even the deepest wounds of war can give way to friendship and lasting peace."

"As we lay a wreath or toss flowers into waters that still weep, we think of the more than 2,400 American patriots, fathers and husbands, wives and daughters, manning heaven's rails for all eternity," Obama said.

In likely the last time he will meet with a foreign leader as president, Obama said the two countries are bound by shared interests and common values, and their alliance is "the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and a force for progress around the globe."

The two leaders greeted survivors in the crowd, shaking hands and hugging some of the men who fought in the battle Dec. 7, 1941.

The visit is proof the former enemies have transcended the recriminatory impulses that weighed down relations after the war, Japan's government has said.

It's also a bookend of sorts for Obama, who nearly eight years ago invited Abe's predecessor to be the first leader he hosted at the White House.

For Abe, it's an act of symbolic reciprocity, coming six months after Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima in Japan, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in hopes of ending the war it entered after Pearl Harbor.

"This visit, and the president's visit to Hiroshima earlier this year, would not have been possible eight years ago," said Daniel Kritenbrink, Obama's top Asia adviser in the White House.

In the years after Japan's attack, the U.S. incarcerated 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps before dropping atomic bombs in 1945 that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Obama did not apologize at Hiroshima in May, a visit he and Abe used to emphasize their aspirations for a nuclear-free future. Nor did Abe on Tuesday.

No apology needed, said 96-year-old Alfred Rodrigues, a U.S. Navy veteran who survived what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a "date which will live in infamy."

"War is war," Rodrigues said as he looked at old photos of his military service. "They were doing what they were supposed to do, and we were doing what we were supposed to do."

Abe's visit is not without political risk given the Japanese people's long, emotional reckoning with their nation's aggression in the war. Though the history books have largely deemed Pearl Harbor a surprise attack, Japan's government insisted as recently as this month that it had intended to give the U.S. prior notice that it was declaring war and failed only because of "bureaucratic bungling."

"There's this sense of guilt, if you like, among Japanese, this 'Pearl Harbor syndrome,' that we did something very unfair," said Tamaki Tsukada, a minister in the Embassy of Japan in Washington. "I think the prime minister's visit will in a sense absolve that kind of complex that Japanese people have."

Since the war, the U.S. and Japan have built a powerful alliance that both sides say has grown during Obama's tenure, including strengthened military ties.

Moving beyond the painful legacy of the war has been easier for the two countries than for Japan and its other former foes, such as South Korea and China. As Abe arrived in Hawaii, Beijing dismissed as "wishful thinking" the notion that Japan could "liquidate the history of World War II" by visiting Pearl Harbor.

"Japan can never turn this page over without reconciliation from China and other victimized countries in Asia," said Hua Chunying, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman.