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Abe, Obama Announce ‘Alliance of Hope’ at Pearl Harbor | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) delivers remarks as U.S. President Barack Obama looks on at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters


Honolulu, U.S. – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited on Tuesday the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, where he offered “sincere and everlasting condolences” to the victims of Japan’s attack on the base 75 years ago.

“We must never repeat the horrors of war again, this is the solemn vow the people of Japan have taken,” he said.

Hosting Abe, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke of lessons of peace saying the two leaders sent a message that “there is more to be won in peace than in war.”

“As nations, and as people, we cannot choose the history that we inherit, but we can choose what lesson to draw from it,” Obama said.

Abe offered his condolences to the people who were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, after visiting the memorial to the sunken battleship USS Arizona.

“President Obama, the people of the United States of America and the people around the world, as the prime minister of Japan I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who have lost their lives here,” Abe said.

The Japanese prime minister went on to praise the U.S. for its efforts to mend relations with Japan following the war between the two countries, which ended shortly after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945.
He also called the renewed alliance between the countries an “alliance of hope”.

Abe is the first Japanese leader to visit the memorial on the site of the Arizona, although several of his predecessors have been to Pearl Harbor in the past.