Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor with President Barack Obama on Tuesday to "express the value of reconciliation between Japan and the United States," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said earlier this month.
The White House has said Abe's visit would highlight the alliance between the former wartime enemies.
Abe will be the first Japanese incumbent prime minister at Pearl Harbor since a brief stopover by Japan’s former leader Shigeru Yoshida on September 12, 1951.
The visit Tuesday comes 75 years after the attack that thrust the United States into World War II, and less than four weeks before Donald Trump becomes the United States' 45th president.
Last month, Abe became the first world leader to meet Trump after the election. Following their hastily arranged meeting in New York, Abe called Trump a "trustworthy” leader.
Abe will not apologize for the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that killed more than 2,000 military personnel, a Japanese government spokesman said.
In a similar move, Obama did not apologize for the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in 1945.
