The team of about 50 people called “neniri,” which means “thorough” in Japanese, is double-checking quality in addition to regular checks, said Toru Hasegawa, president of Nissan Motor Co.’s Thai operations.

Demand for the March in Japan — also known as the Micra in some markets — has been strong since it went on sale in July, with orders topping 20,000 so far.

Nissan is thinking about making other models in Thailand for export, Hasegawa said, as a surging yen, high labor costs and stagnating domestic demand make production in Japan less lucrative for automakers.

March production in Thailand began in March. Production is set to start in May in India, August in China, November in Indonesia and next year in Mexico.

Hasegawa said the main problems with Thai-made vehicles are looks such as uneven paint jobs and parts not fitting perfectly.

“You know how picky Japanese customers can get,” he told reporters at Nissan’s Yokohama headquarters. “We were really thorough in fixing problems for the March.”

Nissan is sending in about 20 workers a month to Thailand from its Japanese plant to train workers in quality production.

Nissan is also beefing up quality checks at suppliers in Thailand, which produce parts for Nissan plants in 15 nations, including Great Britain, Spain, South Africa, Mexico, China and Japan.

Nissan’s decision to sell Thai-made March cars in Japan is helping raise its reputation for quality in Thailand, according to Hasegawa.

Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp., recently beset with quality lapse problems, mostly in North America, controls about 40 percent of the Thai car market.

Nissan Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga is carefully watching the quality woes at Toyota, including the possibility raised by Toyota President Akio Toyoda that it had grown too fast and not kept up with monitoring quality.

“We are taking this seriously,” Shiga told The Associated Press at a recent event. “We must be able to respond quickly to customers.”

Nissan, which controlled about 5 percent of the Thai market in fiscal 2008, is hoping to raise that to more than 10 percent by fiscal 2012.

The economies of Southeast Asian nations like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are thriving, and car ownership is expected to grow over the next few years.

The region is drawing investments from other automakers, including Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co.

“We hope to be able to deliver the same standard for Nissan quality everywhere,” Hasegawa said. — AP

China has twice summoned Japan’s ambassador to demand the release of the skipper, who was arrested early Wednesday following the collisions and a chase in the East China Sea near an island chain claimed by both nations.

The Japan Coast Guard, which arrested 41-year-old Zhan Qixiong and took him to the southern Japanese island of Ishigaki, on Thursday transferred him to prosecutors there who were questioning him before deciding whether to indict him.

Zhan was arrested on suspicion of obstructing officers on duty, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment.

A Coast Guard spokeswoman also said “investigators today started inspecting the trawler and will soon start questioning the 14 fishermen on the boat”, which is docked off Ishigaki island in Okinawa prefecture.

Tokyo suspects the captain deliberately rammed the two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in a tense confrontation near uninhabited islands which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.

The incident started Tuesday morning when Japan’s 1,300-ton patrol ship Yonakuni ordered the fishing trawler to cease operations near the rocky islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China

In the ensuing confrontation the Chinese boat’s bow hit the Yonakuni’s stern before it sailed off. About 40 minutes later it collided with another Japanese patrol boat, the Mizuki. No one was injured in the collisions.

Four Japanese patrol ships pursued the Chinese vessel, and Coast Guard personnel later boarded it to question the captain over the incident and on suspicion of violating Japan’s fisheries law.

The incident came as the number of Chinese vessels fishing near the disputed islands has risen since last month, reported the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

The daily said some 160 Chinese vessels were fishing near the islands on Tuesday and 30 of them were inside what Japan says are its territorial waters.

The newspaper quoted a local Japanese fisherman as saying: “The Chinese may be coming down south to seek richer fishing grounds.” — AFP

Tokyo has arrested the boat’s captain. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said Japanese Ambassador Uichiro Niwa was summoned Wednesday to see Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue, who demanded that the Chinese vessel be released immediately. The crew, who do not have passports, are waiting on the boat. Niwa also was summoned Tuesday evening.

But Japanese officials repeated their territorial claims over the islands, adding that they had no immediate plans to release the captain or the boat. Japan has also lodged a protest over the incident to the Chinese side.

The collisions happened in Japanese territorial waters off the northwestern coast of Japan’s Kuba island, just north of uninhabited, disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. The islands, about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of Taiwan, are controlled by Japan but are also claimed by China and Taiwan.

Japan Coast Guard officials said Wednesday that the Chinese captain of the fishing boat had been arrested for allegedly obstructing public duties in connection with Tuesday’s collision near the chain of islands in the East China Sea.

Coast Guard spokesman Daisuke Takahashi said officials are interrogating the captain. They were also to question the ship’s remaining 14 crew members, who are free to return to China, if the Chinese send a vessel to pick them up.

Japanese Foreign Press Secretary Satoru Sato told reporters Wednesday that Japan’s territorial ownership of the Senkaku is “the undeniable fact” and that the collision case should be investigated properly under Japan’s criminal law.

In Beijing, there was a small, organized protest Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy. About 30 people gathered to shout slogans and wave flags. Such events usually happen only with the approval of local police or officials. The group also submitted a letter of protest to the embassy.

Territorial disputes have been a disruptive undercurrent in Japan-China relations, which remain fraught despite attempts to improve them. As the robust Chinese economy’s demand for resources grows, China’s commercial ships are venturing farther from shore and its more powerful navy is enforcing claims in disputed waters.

Last month, a Chinese survey ship allegedly entered Japan’s disputed exclusive economic zone without prior notification, breaking a previous agreement between the two countries. In April, a Chinese helicopter came within 300 feet (90 meters) of a Japanese military monitoring vessel in the vicinity of a Chinese naval exercise.

The collisions occurred after the Japanese patrol vessels ordered the Chinese ship to stop for an inspection for allegedly violating international fishing laws after repeatedly ignoring earlier warnings to leave the area, another Coast Guard spokesman Yosuke Oi said.

No injuries were reported in the two separate collisions that occurred within 40 minutes, Oi said. The two Japanese patrol vessels sustained minor damage. It was unclear whether the Chinese ship was damaged.

Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, told a regular news conference Tuesday that Beijing has reiterated its claim to the Diaoyu Islands and its adjacent islets and urged Japanese patrol boats in the area not to patrol there. — AP

Just days before he was freed, Kosuke Tsuneoka said one of the militants brought him his new cell phone and asked the prisoner to set it up.

The younger militants were more interested in accessing Al-Jazeera on the phone, but Tsuneoka shifted their attention to Twitter, successfully getting them to ask him to demonstrate how it worked. He then sent the two following tweets: “i am still allive, but in jail” and “here is archi in kunduz. in the jail of commander lativ.”

“That’s how I got the message out,” Tsuneoka told a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, a day after he arrived safely back in Japan. “I’m sure they never thought they were tricked.”

A couple of days later, the militants — whom Tsuneoka said identified themselves as members of Hizb-e-Islami but posed as Taliban to the Japanese government — set him free in part because he is a Muslim. He had converted to Islam in 2000.

The Japanese government said it paid no ransom to free Tsuneoka. He said he believes that because the captors didn’t seem to be overjoyed at the time of his release or suggest they had received any cash.

During his five-month captivity in northern provinces of Kunduz and Takhar, the freelance journalist thought he would never get out alive.

“I thought I would be certainly killed, so I tried to prepare myself to face it,” he recalled. His fear reached its peak in late June, when the captors issued an ultimatum to the Japanese government, threatening to kill him if their demands were not met within 72 hours.

When the time passed, and there was no sign they were going to kill him, he started to think he could survive and gain freedom at some point.

“Although it was frustrating that I didn’t know when that might be, my fear of death gradually faded and I felt better,” he said.

Tsuneoka said after that, anger rather than fear helped him survive the ordeal. Even though his captors fed him well and never used violence, he repeatedly thought about how he could retaliate against them.

“They are a bunch of thieves just trying to extort money from Japan,” he said.

The rest was boredom. He had nothing to do but sleep, gaze out the window to see birds or count ants crawling on the dirt floor, when the young militants were not around to talk.

Tsuneoka was kidnapped in April, when he traveled to a Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan, and was released Saturday night to a Japanese Embassy.

Tsuneoka had been abducted before. He disappeared in Georgia in 2001 and was held for several months by unidentified individuals, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was freed during a Georgian military operation.

Tsuneoka is the latest of more than half a dozen foreign journalists kidnapped in Afghanistan, including two French reporters who were seized last December in Kapisa province just outside Kabul.

Despite what he had gone through, Tsuneoka doesn’t mind returning to Afghanistan.

“I’m ready to go back right now,” he said. “But after all the trouble, I have to think how not to repeat the same mistake. That’s the problem.” — AP

TOKYO – Japan opened up the secretive world of its capital punishment system to the public Friday, offering journalists a rare tour of Tokyo’s main gallows in an effort to stoke debate about a practice widely supported here.

All executions in Japan are carried out by hanging, and no media coverage of executions is permitted. Inmates on death row do not know when they will be executed until the last minute, while family members and lawyers are only told afterward. Along with the United States, Japan is one of the few industrialized countries that maintains capital punishment.

Despite persistent criticism by rights groups such as Amnesty International and the main Japanese bar association, there is little public outcry against capital punishment in Japan, where recent government surveys showed more than 80 percent support ratings.

But the media tour at the Tokyo Detention Center — broadcast on major TV stations — appears to be driven by Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who opposes the death penalty.

In July, Chiba approved — and witnessed — the hangings of two inmates convicted of murder, saying she was carrying out her duties as justice minister.

Afterward, Chiba said she still supports abolishing capital punishment, and as a way to spur public debate, ordered that journalists be given a tour of the facilities, which Japanese press said was the first since at least the end of World War II. She also promised to create a ministry panel to discuss the death penalty, including whether it should be stopped.

“I hope the public viewing of the execution chamber today would help national debate on the death penalty,” Chiba said after the press tour.

But justice officials said the viewing was a one-off.

“In principle, we believe the execution chamber is not suited for public viewing because of its nature,” said Satoshi Tomiyama, a correction official at the ministry.

Japanese TV news programs Friday showed footage from the tour, including the execution room, where a red square marked the trapdoor where the condemned stands.

Foreign press were barred from the visit despite repeated requests for access by The Associated Press and other media organizations. The Ministry of Justice gave no clear reason.

Even the exact location of the execution site is a secret. According to media accounts, the reporters were taken on a bus with curtains closed so that the location couldn’t be identified.

The tour was led to a room decorated with a Buddha statue before reaching the death chamber, separated by a curtain. The hanging rope was removed from the ceiling-mounted pulley and the trapdoor was closed.

TV footage showed a small room next to the chamber where three executioners simultaneously push a button so none knows who activated the trapdoor.

Japan has a 99 percent conviction rate — a number that hasn’t changed even after the country introduced a jury system for serious cases tried at district courts.

The high conviction rate has raised concerns about problems in the country’s criminal justice. Police interrogate suspects in closed rooms for hours without an attorney present or full recording, which critics say leads to coerced confessions and conviction of the innocent.

So far, none of the jury trials have involved cases that involve the death penalty, but some people, including those who served as jurists, have expressed concerns about serving on such cases.

Anti-execution lawyer Yoshihiro Yasuda has accused Chiba of trading two lives for the opportunity to stir public debate.

“Execution is murder. It’s wrong to use the execution to promote (a) review of the death penalty,” he said. “I’m afraid that a public viewing could instead justify the cause, depending on its presentation.”

A series of false convictions that surfaced in recent months have also raised concerns. Recently, a 63-year-old man sentence to life in prison for the murder of a 4-year-old girl was released after DNA tests showed he was innocent. — AP

HONG KONG (AFP) – Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.

Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.

“I can remember the shape, but I can?t remember the strokes that you need to write it,” she says. “It?s a bit of a problem.”

Surveys indicate the phenomenon, dubbed “character amnesia”, is widespread across China, causing young Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.

Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems.

There is even a Chinese word for it: “tibiwangzi”, or “take pen, forget character”.

A poll commissioned by the China Youth Daily in April found that 83 percent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters.

As a result, Li says that she has become almost dependent on her phone.

“When I can?t remember, I will take out my cellphone and find it (the character) and then copy it down,” she says.

Zeng Ming, 22, from the southern Guangdong province, says: “I think it’s a young people’s problem, or at least a computer users’ problem.”

One notoriously forgettable character, Zeng says, is used in the word Tao Tie — a legendary Chinese monster that was so greedy it ate itself.

Still used as a byword for gluttony, the Tao Tie is one of many ancient Chinese concepts embedded in the language.

“It?s like you?re forgetting your culture,” Zeng says.

Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people use electronic input systems based on pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.

The user enters each word using pinyin, and the device offers a menu of characters that match. So users must recognise the character, but they don’t need to be able to write it.

In Japan, where three writing systems are combined into one, mobiles and computers use the simpler hiragana and katakana scripts for inputting — meaning users may forget the kanji, a third strand of Japanese writing similar to Chinese characters.

“We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs,” said Ayumi Kawamoto, 23, shopping in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza district.

“I’ve mostly forgotten characters I learned in middle and high school and I tend to forget the characters I only occasionally use.”

Tokyo student Maya Kato, 22, said: “I hardly hand-write anymore, which is the main reason why I have forgotten so many characters.

“It is frustrating because I always almost remember the character, and lose it at the last minute. I forget if there was an extra line, or where the dot is supposed to go.”

Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, says Siok Wai Ting, assistant professor of linguistics at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability.

“There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic — we have to memorise, we have to rote learn,” she says.

“Through writing, we memorise the characters. Reading and writing are more closely connected in Chinese.”

Chinese reading even uses a different part of the brain from reading the Roman alphabet, Siok?s research has found — a part closer to the motor area, which is used for handwriting.

Chinese characters are so complex that the country’s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong told the US journalist Edgar Snow in 1936: “Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate.”

Instead, Mao eventually chose to simplify many characters into forms now the standard in mainland China.

Victor Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, said character amnesia is part of a “natural process of evolution”.

“The reasons why characters are innately difficult to enter into computers and mobile phones are innate to the character-based writing systems themselves,” he said.

“There are no magic bullets that will make it easy to input characters,” he added.

The Wubi input system — available on some Chinese computers and backed by the government — uses character strokes as handwriting does. But the system itself is so difficult to learn that it has failed to gain mass appeal.

However, iPhones and other smartphones now offer an option in which users can input characters by drawing them onto the touch screen.

And in Japan, kanji kentei — a character quiz with 12 levels — has become a widespread craze among schoolchildren, housewives and retirees, according to Yoshiko Nakano, associate professor of Japanese at the University of Hong Kong.

Some argue that the perceived decline in character knowledge is, in fact, nothing to worry about.

A survey by the southern Chinese news portal Dayang Net, found that 80 percent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters — but 43 percent said they used handwritten characters only for signatures and forms.

“The idea that China is a country full of people who write beautiful, fluid literature in characters without a second thought is a romantic fantasy,” wrote the blogger and translator C. Custer on his Chinageeks blog.

“Given the social and financial pressures that exist for most people in China… (and) given that nearly everyone has a cellphone, it really isn?t a problem at all.”

The explosion of internet and phone technology has itself led to the creation of new words and forms of writing. In 2008 Chinese people were sending 175 billion text messages each quarter, according to the Xinhua state news agency.

Still, both Li Hanwei and Zeng Ming have become so concerned about character amnesia that they keep handwritten diaries partly to ensure they don?t forget how to write.

If it weren?t for this, would they actually need to remember how to write characters with a pen?

Li is almost stumped, but says she uses one “when I have to sign the back of my new credit card”. “That?s almost all,” she says. — AFP

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said the government would draw up stimulus plans in the coming days.

“Given the current situation, we will decide on it as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

His comments came as the Nikkei business daily and other media sid the government plans to compile an outline of the fresh economic package by the end of August, or Tuesday, citing unnamed government sources.

It said Prime Minister Naoto Kan was considering a supplementary budget to pay for the package of new measures, without citing sources.

Pressure on Japan to conjure bolder economic policy and counter the effects of the strong yen is increasing as stocks fall and softening export growth and weak gross domestic product data point to a slowing recovery.

Exports have been crucial to Japan’s post-recession growth but the yen’s current strength against other major currencies harms repatriated overseas profits, amid fears the strong currency could send more production abroad.

All of which pose a challenge for Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government and its agenda focused on cutting the industrialised world’s biggest public debt, at nearly 200 percent of GDP.

Hiromasa Yonekura, the president of Japan’s major business lobby the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) told reporters he told Kan that the government “should intervene in the currency market”.

The yen has steadily appreciated against the dollar in recent months as global investors have shunned the US currency due to the uncertain outlook of the world’s number one economy.

The unit’s rise to 15-year highs against the greenback and a nine-year high against the euro helped push the Nikkei index below the 9,000 level Tuesday.

For every one-yen rise against the dollar, Japan’s exporters can lose tens of billions of yen earned overseas when repatriated, threatening a sector that Japan depends on to offset its weak domestic market.

Given lower stock prices and the yen’s upsurge, the Bank of Japan is considering additional monetary easing such as injecting more funds into money markets, the Nikkei has reported. — AFP

It was not clear what prompted the remarks by Democratic Party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa at a political seminar, in which he otherwise paid tribute to Americans’ commitment to democracy, saying it was something Japan should learn from.

“I like Americans, but they are somewhat monocellular,” the former Democratic Party leader said. “When I talk with Americans, I often wonder why they are so simple-minded.”

Ozawa didn’t elaborate on what aspect of Americans made him compare them monocellular organisms, a term also used to mean shortsighted or dumb.

There is growing speculation that the 68-year-old former party leader — renowned as a backroom dealer and election strategist but unpopular among the wider public — may run against rival Prime Minister Naoto Kan in a Sept. 14 election for the party leadership.

Ozawa steered clear of that topic in his speech at the seminar to about 50 lawmakers from the party and dozens of other invitees. But later Wednesday he hinted he would, telling supporters his decision on whether to run would hopefully “respond to your expectations.” He said he needed more time to make that decision.

Ozawa was forced to resign as party secretary-general in early June over a funding scandal, though he has denied any wrongdoing.

Despite the Democratic Party-led government’s monthslong tussle with Washington over the planned relocation of a major U.S. military base in Okinawa — which has weakened public support for the government — Tokyo and Washington remain close allies, and Ozawa’s comments on Americans did not appear geared at currying support within the party.

Ozawa, who advocates a U.S.-style two-party political system for Japan — which currently has a coalition government — praised Americans for electing President Barack Obama.

“I don’t think Americans are very smart, but I give extremely high credit for democracy and choices by its people,” he said. “They chose a black president for the first time in U.S. history,” adding that he thought once that would never be possible. — AP

The central bank may expand its programme to provide funds to financial institutions at a 0.1-percent fixed rate for three months, the Sankei Shimbun said.

Such a measure, if adopted, should help lower interest rates in the market place and bring down the yen, the newspaper said.

The BoJ may also lengthen the lending period for the funds to six months from the current three months, the Sankei said.

Some market players have speculated that the central bank could announce its new measures this week, before a reported meeting between BoJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa and Prime Minister Naoto Kan next week.

Kan and Shirakawa are expected to discuss steady appreciation of the yen, which recently hit 15-year highs against the dollar, threatening a fragile export-led recovery.

Kan is also expected to decide an outline of new stimulus measures as early as September in a bid to safeguard Japan’s recovery, local media have said. — AFP

TOKYO – Asia paused on Sunday to remember Japan’s surrender to the allied forces which ended World War II 65 years ago, as the Japanese prime minister apologized for wreaking suffering on the region and the South Korean president said Tokyo’s remorse was a step in the right direction.

From Nanjing — the site of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops — to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which has drawn outrage from Asia for honoring Class A war criminals, people prayed for the millions who died in war and expressed hopes for peace.

The reckoning with history has taken special meaning this year as it comes amid a global effort to realize a world without nuclear weapons, a resolve backed by President Barack Obama. But there were reminders of lingering tensions.

In Seoul, President Lee Myung-bak, dressed in traditional robes, led a ceremony celebrating the liberation of the Korean peninsula from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule with the Aug. 15 surrender.

He also urged North Korea to abandon military provocations and make a “courageous change” toward peace. Relations with North Korea have nose-dived after the March sinking of a South Korean warship and Pyongyang’s firing last week of a barrage of artillery into South Korean waters.

In Tokyo, at a ceremony for the war dead, Prime Minister Naoto Kan reiterated his apology to South Korea for wartime atrocities, and this time offered his regret to all of Asia.

Last week, Kan offered “deep remorse” in an apology issued ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Japanese annexation of the Korean peninsula on Aug. 29, 1910.

“We caused great damage and suffering to many nations during the war, especially to the people of Asia,” Kan said Sunday before a crowd of about 6,000, including Emperor Akihito, at Budokan hall.

“We feel a deep regret, and we offer our sincere feelings of condolence to those who suffered and their families,” Kan said.

Lee said history should not be forgotten, but that Kan’s apology last week marked progress.

“I have taken note of Japan’s effort, which represents one step forward,” Lee said.

“However, there still remain issues that have to be resolved,” he said, without elaborating. “The two countries are called upon to take concrete measures to forge a new relationship for another 100 years.”

Many older Koreans still harbor resentment against Japan over the colonization. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forced to fight as front-line soldiers, work in slave-labor conditions or serve as prostitutes called “comfort women” in brothels operated by the military.

Later Sunday, about 50 women rallied in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, chanting slogans and demanding compensation for former comfort women and other Korean victims of colonial rule.

Reflecting a common sentiment among Koreans, activist Lee Kang-sil criticized Japan’s apology as “lacking in action.”

Such hard feelings were also evident in China, where about 300 people gathered in the eastern city of Nanjing, to remember the victims of the 1937 “Nanjing Massacre,” known in the West as the “Rape of Nanking,” a rampage by Japanese troops that many historians generally agree ended with the slaughter of at least 150,000 civilians and disarmed soldiers and the rape of tens of thousands of women. The estimates are debated, with China saying the figures are far higher, while some Japanese historians claim they are lower.

In Australia, World War II veterans and representatives from New Zealand, the U.S. and Asian countries were among more than 300 people gathered in downtown Sydney to mark the anniversary.

The group placed wreaths at the foot of the Cenotaph war memorial to mark Japan’s surrender and observed a minute of silence.

More than 27,000 Australians were killed or died as prisoners of war during World War II.

New South Wales Returned and Services League President Don Rowe said Australians at home and overseas were fighting for victory and peace.

“And when peace came some 65 years ago today, it was also a sad time for many, many families whose loved ones never returned,” Rowe said. “So today, ladies and gentlemen, we remember that victory but we also remember those who laid down their lives.”

Kan and his Cabinet broke from the past by staying away from Yasukuni Shrine, while members of the opposition continued with their visits, including Liberal Democratic leader Sadakazu Tanigaki and former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The national Mainichi newspaper expressed hopes for a world without nuclear weapons, highlighted by Obama’s promise to work toward nuclear disarmament.

“We must never repeat the tragedy of war, and we must continue to build peace. This anniversary should be a time for each of us to reflect,” it said in an editorial Sunday.

Memorials were held earlier this month in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities devastated by U.S. nuclear attacks at the end of World War II.

U.S. Ambassador John Roos became the first official U.S. representative to attend the Hiroshima commemoration this year. Hopes are high Obama will also go to Hiroshima during his trip to Japan set for later this year.

At Sunday’s ceremony, Akihito led a moment of silence at noon, bowing before a stage filled with yellow and white chrysanthemums.

It was the his father Hirohito’s radio broadcast 65 years ago that announced the end of World War II — the first time the Japanese public had ever heard the voice of the emperor, who had been revered as a living god.

“I feel once again a deep sadness for those many who lost their precious lives and for their families,” Akihito said. “I pray for the continued prosperity of our nation and for world peace.” — AP

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(This version CORRECTS typo in “rampage” in graf 16.)