TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, bid farewell through a video message released on Monday (January 16), as her term comes to an end on Friday (January 20) when a new U.S. administration comes in.
“Hello everyone in Japan (Japanese), serving as the United States Ambassador to our closest friend and ally has been the greatest privilege of my life. I want to thank the people of Japan for taking me and my family into their hearts, right from the beginning,” Kennedy said in the video.
“Most of all, I want to thank the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kishida for welcoming President Obama to Hiroshima, and for visiting Pearl Harbor, just last month,” she added.
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese leader in office to visit Pearl Harbor to commemorate the victims of the Japanese attack 75 years ago.
Seven months earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima where the United States dropped an atomic bomb in the final days of the World War II, for the first time as a serving president.
The daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy was appointed to the position by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013. She has been in Japan for three years.
Late last year, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team issued a blanket mandate for politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day.
Trump’s transition team said William Hagerty, a Tennessee native who served in the White House staff during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, was picked as the next U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Hagerty spent several years in Japan with the Boston Consulting Group.
