|
| Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visits the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japanese war dead but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II, in Tokyo on Dec 29, 2016. (AFP / Jiji Press) |
TOKYO -- Japan's defence minister visited a controversial shrine to Japan's war dead on Thursday, just after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a historic visit to Pearl Harbor , where Japan's attack brought the United States into World War Two.
Japan and the US... are now the strongest allies... I made my visit wishing to firmly create peace for Japan and the world from a future-oriented perspective
Inada, Japan's defence minister
Television footage showed Tomomi Inada visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japanese who lost their lives in the country's wars, including several leaders executed for war crimes. Visits to the shrine by prominent Japanese officials anger neighbours China and South Korea, which consider Yasukuni a symbol of Japan's militarism and a reminder of its wartime atrocities.
Inada joined Abe and Barack Obama on Tuesday for the first visit by a Japanese leader and a US president to commemorate the victims of the Japanese attack 75 years ago.
"Japan and the United States, who engaged in the fiercest fighting, are now the strongest allies ," Inada said at Yasukuni, according to the Sankei newspaper. "I made my visit wishing to firmly create peace for Japan and the world from a future-oriented perspective."
|
| This picture taken on Dec 26, 2016 shows Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2nd L) and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada (2nd R) waving as they depart for Hawaii from Tokyo's Haneda airport. Japan's defence minister Inada went to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Dec 29, media reports said, the day accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a highly symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor. (AFP / Kazuhiro Nogi) |
