The government of Japan sought to tamp down a report by one of its major newspapers that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is considering visiting Pearl Harbor in the spring, 70 years after the war in the Pacific waged by Japan against Allied forces drew to a close.
It would be the first such visit by a Japanese prime minister to the still emotionally raw site of the surprise Dec. 7, 1941, attack that drew America into World War II.
"As allies, the strong ties between Japan and the United States have been maintained, and American ill-feeling toward Japan for deeds of the past continues to weaken," the Mainichi Shimbun quoted an unnamed government official saying. "The prime minister can demonstrate his desire for a framework for international peace by paying his solemn respects to the dead."
The newspaper said Abe plans to travel to the United States in late April and early May to meet with President Barack Obama.
Japan’s Consulate General in Honolulu referred Thursday to a comment by Yoshihide Suga, chief secretary of the Abe Cabinet, who said that the news article was "based on misinformation" and that the Abe administration "has not considered any plans to visit Pearl Harbor."
Abe’s nationalist agenda has included engineering an expanded interpretation of military self-defense and outside worries that he seeks to downplay Japan’s role in starting the war.
Nevertheless, Abe said earlier this month that he won’t veer from past official statements on Japan’s wartime responsibility, including a 1995 apology.
When the surprise Japanese attack on Oahu ended on Dec. 7, 1941, less than two hours after it began, American forces had "paid a fearful price," the U.S. Navy said.
Twenty-one ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged, and American dead totaled 2,403 people, including 68 civilians, according to the Navy.
Nearly four years later on Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, immediately killing more than 80,000 Japanese, with tens of thousands more dying of radiation exposure.
More than 74,000 were killed in the second use of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Japan announced its surrender six days later.
"Historical legacies of World War Two continue to hold back cooperation in Asia and have particularly plagued Japan’s post-Cold War global role," said Joshua W. Walker, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, in an opinion piece in Reuters.
"Pearl Harbor is an important reminder of how Japan was once hijacked by a military industrial complex that demanded further conquest to maintain its empire, but also of the new Japan that through embracing defeat and American occupation re-imagined itself as the world’s first pacifist power."
Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, said "obviously, the Japanese government has to think long and hard and carefully about how to commemorate the end of the war — and it’s extremely delicate for Abe."
The United States, China and South Korea see the 70th anniversary as an opportunity for Abe "to maybe step back from where most people perceive his government as being right now, which is sort of minimally committed to the past apologies and seemingly wanting to move the historical record a step in the other direction, sort of exonerating Japan. And nobody else is ready for that," Roy said.
Either during the George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton presidencies, there were discussions about a very high-ranking Japanese official visiting Pearl Harbor "and saying something about Japan’s guilt in the war as part of a package deal which would also include an American apology for the atomic bombings," Roy said.
Japan’s Emperor Akihito was expected to visit Pearl Harbor in 1994, but objections from the country’s right wing led to Akihito laying a wreath for war dead at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl instead.
The emperor again laid a wreath at Punchbowl in 2009.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
