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U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. File
| Photo Credit: AP
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised on Saturday (March 29, 2025) the friendship and trust that his country and Japan have developed while attending a memorial service on Iwo Jima to honor those who died in battle during World War II.
Japan is Mr. Hegseth’s second stop after the Philippines on his first Asia trip. His visit comes as Beijing has been showing increasingly assertive actions in the disputed South China Sea and following threats by President Donald Trump to impose trade tariffs on the East Asian country, a key U.S. ally.
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Mr. Hegseth landed on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, now known as Iwoto, where Japanese and American soldiers faced off in one of the war’s fiercest battles. He joined several American veterans who survived the battle and Japanese bereaved families, as well as his Japanese counterpart, Gen Nakatani, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and other officials at Saturday’s Reunion of Honor event.
“Iwo Jima embodies our shared warrior ethos, our shared devotion to the nation, and to duty and our shared reverence for the men of valor who preceded us,” Mr. Hegseth said in front of the cenotaph built in 1985 marking their first joint memorial.
“The U.S.-Japan alliance shows … how yesterday’s enemy has become today’s friends,” Hegseth said. “Our alliance has been and remains the cornerstone of freedom, prosperity, security and peace in the Indo-Pacific.”
Most of those who fought on the tiny island are gone but their hallowed memory lives on, he said, and expressed appreciation for the six veterans aged about 100 who attended the memorial.
The veterans slowly walked to the epitaph with the help of younger servicemembers to pay tribute to their fellow Marines and sailors who perished there. Charles Cram, a Pharmacist Mate 2nd Class who was wounded and awarded for his bravery, saluted the epitaph and gently touched the wreath of red, blue and white flowers, as did the others.
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Recent polls show the Japanese feel more affinity toward the U.S. than any other country. Most Americans and Japanese alive today were born after Japan surrendered in August 1945.
Japan, which faces growing threats from China, North Korea and Russia, has been accelerating its military buildup and increasingly working closely with the U.S. military.
On Sunday, Mr. Hegseth will hold talks with Nakatani in Tokyo to discuss further strengthening the alliance.
“We must not forget that the peace and prosperity we enjoy today have been built upon the noble sacrifices of those who died in the war and the tireless efforts of the people over the past 80 years since the end of the war,” said Japan’s Ishiba, who became the first serving Japanese Prime Minister to attend the joint Iwo Jima memorial.
Mr. Ishiba renewed his determination to peace and to further elevate the Japan-U.S. alliance.
“And we must continue to endeavor to humbly face the history and keep telling the harrowing experience of the war to the world so that we never repeat the tragedy of war,” Mr. Ishiba said.
Published – March 29, 2025 09:40 pm IST
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Hegseth joins WWII memorial service on his first trip to Japan
