Emperor visits site of wartime mass suicide

JAPAN’S Emperor Akihito yesterday visited a cliff where his countrymen plunged to their deaths to avoid capture by US troops.

He also, for the first time, paid his respects to the Koreans who died while fighting for the Japanese in World War II.

On the first trip by a Japanese monarch to a wartime battle site overseas, Akihito and Empress Michiko visited several memorials on this tiny Pacific island honouring Japanese, Americans, local islanders, and Koreans forced to serve in the name of his father, the late Emperor Hirohito.