JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor last Tuesday, like US President Barack Obama's trip to Hiroshima six months ago, served as an historic symbol of reconciliation between the two former World War II enemies.

The Japanese and US leaders paid tribute to the 2,403 Americans who were killed when Imperial Japanese warplanes destroyed the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in November 1941, drawing the US into a horrific military conflict between the two nations that ended only after after 80,000 Japanese died when the US used an atomic weapon against Hiroshima and later dropped another one on Nagasaki. Yet notwithstanding the history of the war that spelt death and destruction, the sombre ceremony also provided a major opportunity for the Japanese and the Americans to highlight the dramatic transformation in the relationship between the two nations since the end of World War II, which has helped to establish what in 2016 could be described as America's most important security alliance and economic partnership which both sides have an interest in strengthening in the coming years.

If anything, PM Abe's gestures of reconciliation towards the US and other WWII foes have been driven in part by his long-term goal of revising his nation's pacifist constitution - introduced by the American occupiers after the war - and in particular to change Article 9 of the constitution, which says "land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained".