Japanese Prime Minister Abe stops short of apologizing for Pearl Harbor

U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a historic meeting Tuesday at the site of Japan’s surprise attack on the United States at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor in 1941. Abe did not apologize but conceded Japan “must never repeat the horrors of war again.” The two leaders stood above the wreckage of the USS Arizona and dropped flower petals into the water and stood in silence in honor of those who perished there. “As the prime minister of Japan, I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place,” Abe said later at nearby Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam. That was the closest he would come to an apology for the attack. Obama also declined to apologize seven months ago when he became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, where the United States dropped an atomic bomb in a bid to end the war. Alfred Rodrigues, a 96-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who survived the attack said he had no hard feelings and added, “War is war.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.