Visit to Pearl Harbor

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced on Monday that he would visit Pearl Harbor later this month with United States President Barack Obama, taking opportunity of the last summit meeting of them in Hawaii. It will be the first time for incumbent Prime Minister of Japan to visit Pearl Harbor, where Japan opened the War in Pacific Ocean with surprise attack on U.S. Naval Base seventy-one years ago. Abe is going to deliver his message for not repeating devastation of war and maintaining peace for the future.

The plan was revealed in a sudden and instant press conference in his Official Residence Monday evening. “I’m going to visit Hawaii on 26^th and 27^th of this month and have a meeting with President Obama,” Abe started his remarks. “The meeting will summarize these four years of our relationship,” continued Abe with notion of positive contribution of their relationship on peace and prosperity in Asia-Pacific region, “and I will visit Pearly Harbor with President Obama to pray for the victims.”

Abe told that he had been considering the visit to Pearl Harbor from when he delivered message of seventy-year anniversary from the end of World War II last year. “I have been thinking about meaning of the visit, symbolic value and importance of reconciliation,” told Abe. In the short meeting in Lima, Peru, last month, when Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting was held, Abe told Obama his intention to visit Pearl Harbor.

What Obama insisted was that Abe’s visit should not be something forced. Most people are likely to realize Abe’s visit to Pearl Harbor as an answer to Obama’s historical visit to Hiroshima this May. Obama did not like it. However, the visit to Pearl Harbor must have symbolic meaning of diplomatic mutualism. Abe will take mostly the same ritual in Pearl Harbor as Obama’s in Hiroshima, which will not be apology but laying wreath in U.S.S. Arizona Memorial.

There is a concept on Japan side that Abe’s visit will contribute to make peaceful legacy for the eight years of Obama administration. Rebalance toward Asia-Pacific of Obasma administration was valuable for Japan to appeal importance of relationship with U.S. Japanese diplomatic officials believe that mutual visit to those war memorials will enhance Japan-U.S. bilateral relationship and remind President-elect Donald Trump of the importance of it.

Anyway, the visit will inevitably be a legacy-making for Abe himself. He hopes the visit to justify his policy approaching to U.S., including legislation of Designated Secrecy Law or reinterpretation of Article 9 of Constitution of Japan. Although American media welcomed the surprising news from Japan, it is still possible that American conservatives protest the visit of the leader of Japan, the nation that made horrific attack on U.S. base on a peaceful Sunday.