A memorial rite extending only condolences is said to be the focus of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's upcoming visit to Pearl Harbor of the United States.
Would it suffice to comfort, as Abe plans, the more than 2,000 lives of the U.S. military lost in the Japanese surprise attack 75 years ago?
No apology would be offered during Abe's visit, it has been announced, for launching war without declaration. And would this help voice determination not to repeat the tragedy of war?
Such a vow is just another point Japanese media said Abe will highlight at the ceremony to be held during his trip on Dec. 26-27.
These would substantiate largely the first trip to Pearl Harbor by a Japanese Prime Minister since Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan launched a sudden attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii.
The Pearl Harbor attack propelled the United States into World War II and ushered in ferocious sea battles in the Pacific that would finally force Japan to surrender in 1945.
This is exactly the site, which is both historic and symbolic, that Abe has chosen to demonstrate postwar reconciliation with the United States, but with "no apology."
The trip came after U.S. President Barack Obama paid a visit to Hiroshima earlier this year, where the world's first atomic bomb was dropped by the United States in August 1945. The visit was the first by an incumbent U.S. president.
Since delivering a speech at the U.S. Congress speaking of Pearl Harbor in 2015, Japanese media report said, Abe has been weighing up how to manifest the significance of a visit to the historic site, as well as how to publicize the importance of Japan-U.S. alliance there.
The fact itself indicates a diplomatic show and a political calculation on the Japanese part, which makes the Japanese position of no apology more suggestive.
The no-apology line betrays Abe's revisionist view of the war history.
Pearl Harbor means a lot to Americans. It's hard to know what the Americans would think when the site becomes a stage for a Japanese politician to spread history revisionism.
Neither will one know whether the Americans have ever imagined they would fall victim to Japan again 75 years after, for the latter's intended reinforcement of a military alliance with the United States.
