Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(WASHINGTON) — President Barack Obama is heading back to his home state of Hawaii for his final vacation as president.
Taking off Friday evening, the first family returns to the island Obama grew up on, Oahu, for 17 days, staying near the beach town of Kailua.
The final vacation will be historic in another way — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor following a summit meeting with Obama in Hawaii, becoming the first Japanese leader to go to the site of the Japanese attack that propelled the United States into World War II.
The announcement came after the 75th anniversary of the attack and six months after Obama visited Hiroshima, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the U.S. atomic bombing.
Obama visited the island earlier this year as to designate Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the Hawaiian coast, creating the world’s largest marine protected area.
“This is an area twice the size of Texas that’s going to be protected, and it allows us to save and study the fragile ecosystem threatened by climate change,” Obama said following the designation at a Conference of Leaders and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii, in September.
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.