Abe, Obama Talk At Pearl Harbor
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to deliver remarks Tuesday at Pearl Harbor in a visit aimed at strengthening U.S.-Japan ties. Alongside President Barack Obama, Abe will speak some 75 years after Japan attacked the naval base in Pearl Harbor killing thousands and sparking the U.S. entry into World War II.
"The meeting will be an opportunity for the two leaders to review our joint efforts over the past four years to strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance, including our close cooperation on a number of security, economic, and global challenges," the White House said about Abe's visit to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in statement. "The two leaders’ visit will showcase the power of reconciliation that has turned former adversaries into the closest of allies, united by common interests and shared values."
Abe will be the fourth Japanese prime minister to visit Pearl Harbor, but the first to visit the Arizona, a massive battleship that sunk after it was bombed, killing 1,177 Marines and sailors. Abe's visit is a show of reciprocation after Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, one of the Japanese cities on which the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb in 1945.
"The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace," Obama said in Hiroshima in May. "What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening."
The visit from Abe comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office. The Japanese leader and the president-elect already had a "very candid discussion," in November, according to Abe. It was the first visit from a foreign leader with Trump after he won the presidency. As with most things concerning the Trump administration it is difficult to predict how Japan-U.S. relations will shift under the new president. But this trip is a major effort toward maintaining cooperation between the nations.
"I think, for Americans to see a prime minister come here, it really shows the depth and strength of our alliance," U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy told ABC News.
The event at Pearl Harbor is scheduled to begin around 3:05 p.m. EST. You can watch a live stream at the White House website here or simply watch the embedded video feed below.
Related Articles
