Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday visited Iwoto Island and pledged to speed up the recovery of the remains of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers killed in the Battle of Iwojima, in a pilgrimage intended to mark a break from the postwar period.

"We have to pass the memory of the grisly battle onto the younger generation," Abe said at a memorial service on Iwoto, previously known as Iwojima and located 1,200 km south of Tokyo.

Abe is the third serving prime minister to visit the island, following in the footsteps of Junichiro Koizumi, also of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party of Japan.