SHIMA, Japan — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he doesn’t have specific plans to visit Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor to reciprocate for President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Hiroshima.
Abe says he marked last year’s 70th anniversary of the end of World War II by visiting the United States.
Abe says that trip included a speech to a joint meeting of Congress and a visit to the World War II Memorial in Washington, where he laid a wreath.
Obama plans a historic visit on Friday to Hiroshima. He’ll become the first sitting American president to visit the place where the U.S. ushered in the nuclear age by dropping an atomic bomb in the closing days of World War II.
Some 140,000 people were killed.
The White House says Obama won’t apologize for the decision to drop the bomb, but will reflect on the cost of war and his vision for a nuclear weapon-free world.
Obama is rebuffing China’s claim that closer ties between the United States and Vietnam are creating a “tinderbox” that could lead to conflict.
Obama said the expanding U.S.-Vietnam partnership is entirely independent of China. He said the fact China sees it as a provocation says more about Chinese attitudes than about American ones.
Obama lifted a decades-old arms sales ban on Vietnam during his stop in the country earlier this week. The move comes as Vietnam tries to deal with rising Chinese aggression over its claims in the disputed South China Sea.
Obama spoke at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (shin-zoh ah-bay) before a summit of industrialized nations that opens Thursday in Japan.
Obama is assuring Japan’s prime minister that the U.S. will fully cooperate with the investigation into a former U.S. Marine who’s been arrested in connection with the murder of a Japanese woman in Okinawa.
Obama says the U.S. is appalled by any violent crime that may have occurred or been committed by any U.S. personnel or contractor.
Prime Minister Abe has expressed “strong indignation” over the arrest of 32-year-old Kenneth Shinzato.
Shinzato was arrested after investigators found the body of a missing 20-year-old woman at a location he provided.
Police suspect Shinzato was responsible for the woman’s death. He hasn’t been charged with the crime.
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