Japan Offer Condolences For Pearl Harbour Attack In Historic Visit

Japan’s prime minister has offered his condolences for the Pearl Harbour attack which killed thousands in an historic visit.

Shinzo Abe didn’t go as far as apologising for the attack in 1941 but added that Japan ‘must never repeat the horrors of war again’.

He made the comments on an historic visit to the Hawaii navy base alongside Barack Obama seventy five years after the surprise onslaught which killed 2,403 Americans.

Abe and Obama peered down at the rusting wreckage of the USS Arizona during the visit which was clearly visible in the water.

More than 1,000 US war dead remain entombed in the submerged ship and in a show of respect, Obama and Abe scattered purple petals on the water and stood in silence.

‘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 later at nearby Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam.

It was the closest he would get to an apology for the attack, but it was enough for his US counterpart, who also declined to apologise seven months ago when he became America’s first sitting president to visit Hiroshima.

Later the pair held a formal meeting at another nearby military base, in what the White House said was probably Obama’s last meeting with a foreign leader before leaving office in January.

Obama, speaking after he and Abe laid green-and-peach wreaths at the memorial, called Pearl Harbour a sacred place and said that ‘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,’ he said.