Japan PM to visit Hawaii to remember Pearl Harbor victims with Obama

[December 05, 2016]    TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he would visit Hawaii on Dec. 26 and 27 for his final summit meeting with outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama, and to remember the victims of Japan's Pearl Harbor attack 75 years ago.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gestures during a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 21, 2016. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian

Abe will be the first incumbent Japanese Prime Minister to visit Pearl Harbor after Tokyo launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in December 1941.

His visit follows a landmark trip to Hiroshima in May by Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Japanese city devastated by a U.S. nuclear attack in 1945.

"I'll visit Pearl Harbor with President Obama. This will be a visit to console the souls of the victims," Abe told reporters.

"I would like to show to the world the resolve that horrors of war should never be repeated."

The attack on the naval base by Japanese torpedo planes, bombers and fighter planes drew the United States into World War Two when it declared war on Japan, while the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)

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