Pearl Harbor Visit by Japan PM Abe to Bury Hatchet or History?

In a reciprocal gesture to US President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on May 27, cementing the leftover feelings of animosity, if any, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he would visit Pearl Harbor NOT on December 7 but 20 days later.

Pearl harbor was a US Naval base in Hawaii that Japan attacked on December 7 (in US Time zone), 1941 killing thousands of sailors in an “unannounced” attack that forced the US to plunge into World War Two.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit would be the first ever by a sitting Japanese leader “to pay tribute” to military personnel who died in the war. The visit also coincides with his final summit with outgoing US President Obama.

The stunning declaration came just two days ahead of the 75th anniversary of the attack that propelled the U.S. into World War II.

Photograph of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on USS West Virginia. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over USS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard.

“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 US.”

However, Abe is not expected to express remorse or an expllicit apology for the Pearl Harbor attack. As Obama did not include any apology for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, so will Abe refrain from an apology to what America long argued as treacherous attack unannounced.

The irony goes back to the first week of December in 1941 when Japanese ambassador who was entrusted with the task of war declaration to be handed over to Washington failed to do so on time and the attacks preceded the declaration. US blamed Japan for unilateral attack without proper Declaration of War, an allegation that many Japan historians dislike to be reiterated.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, unprepared American soldiers became the worst victims of an aerial attack on Dec. 7, 1941 — a date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy.” More than 2,400 US servicemen were killed in the attacks.

Hopefully the visit by Abe should end the stamp of illegal attack of Pearl Harbor from Japan’s history pages and bury the hatchet of World War Two though neither side may apologize for their wartime attacks.