UNITED NATIONS--Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will soon

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Centered on the video, Haiti - Senateur Youri Latortue pran gaz nan Manifestation anti Jovenel, UNITED NATIONS--Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will soon visit Pearl Harbor in a gesture of remorse and respect commemorating the 75th anniversary of Imperial Japan's attack on Hawaii.

Recently Abe met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in yet another bid to resolve the long standing territorial dispute concerning the Kuril islands.

But the flurry of current diplomacy has largely overlooked a quiet if poignant recollection of the 60th anniversary of Japan's membership in the United Nations.

In what can be described as nothing less than an extraordinary diplomatic transformation, Japan was invited to join the United Nations just a decade after militarist Japan had been soundly defeated in August 1945 by the Allied powers.

Some of those same Allied states, Britain, China, France and the United States, who had founded the United Nations against Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, now viewed the Tokyo government's membership in the UN as a political plus in the emerging multilateral arena.

Indeed the political landscape had changed; the winds of the cold war blew from Mao's China across a bitterly divided and war-torn Korean peninsula.

Central Europe saw a military/ideological standoff with the Soviets.

Thus a democratizing and pro-West Japan was viewed by the United States as a key piece in the post-war multilateral diplomatic chessboard at the UN.

The year 1956 witnessed a series of momentous geopolitical events which shaped and jolted our world.

In October, the Hungarians rose up in revolt to the Soviets in a heroic and bold revolution.

The same period saw the Suez Crisis, with British, French and Israeli forces trying to take back the Suez Canal from Egypt's nationalistic ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser.

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