Japanese prime minister pays his respects at Pearl Harbor in solemn ceremony

President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Dec. 28 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to pay their respects to the victims and honor the survivors of the attack 75 years ago that drew the United States into World War II.

"It is here that we reflect on how war tests our most enduring values," Obama said. "How even as Japanese-Americans were deprived of their own liberty during the war, one of the most decorated military units in the history of the United States was the 442nd Infantry Regiment, and its 100th Infantry Battalion, the Japanese-American Nisei."

"America's first battle of the Second World War roused a nation," Obama said. "Here, in so many ways, America came of age. A generation of Americans -- including my grandparents, that greatest generation -- they did not seek war, but they refused to shrink from it."

On the front lines and in factories, Americans did their part to win that war, Obama said. To the World War II veterans in his audience, he declared, "A grateful nation thanks you."

The meeting of the two leaders, the president said, was intended to "send a message to the world that there is more to be won in peace than in war, that reconciliation carries more rewards than retribution."

"Here in this quiet harbor, we honor those we lost," Obama said. "And we give thanks for all that our two nations have won, together, as friends."