Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Hawaii Monday morning local time for a two-day visit that appears to be as much about shoring up his credentials as a statesman and trying to address concerns about the future of U.S.-Japan relations under Donald Trump as it is about remembering the past.
The trip, announced just three weeks ago, includes a visit to the USS Arizona Memorial with President Barack Obama, making Abe the first Japanese leader to visit the memorial to the battleship that was sunk on Dec. 7, 1941, and has become the universal symbol of the Japanese attack.
Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida visited Pearl Harbor in 1951, before the memorial site was built.