Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday offered condolences to those to died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Laying wreaths at a memorial to the attack along with outgoing United States President Barack Obama, Abe said Japan would “never repeat the horrors of war again”, Reuters reported.

“I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here,” Abe said. However, he did not apologise for the attack. Chief Cabinet Secretary to Abe’s government Yoshihide Suga told reporters that the visit to Pearl Harbor was only to “console the souls” of those who died in the attack.

Obama called Abe’s visit an “historic gesture” that was “a reminder that even the deepest wounds of war can give way to friendship and a lasting peace”. “We think of the more than 2,400 American patriots, fathers and husbands, wives and daughters, manning heaven’s rails for all eternity,” he said, according to AP. Abe and Obama also greeted the survivors of the attack. While other Japanese leaders have visited Pearl Harbor, Abe is the first one to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, which was built over the remains of the sunken battleship.

Abe’s visit comes seven months after Obama visited Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities that were bombed by nuclear weapons in 1945. Obama said his visit, the first by a sitting US president, was “a testament to how even the most painful of divides can be bridged”. However, Obama also clarified his trip was meant to honour the victims of the deadly war, and not to apologise for the attack that killed at least 1,40,000 people.