The President's Toast at a Luncheon Honoring the Japanese Cabinet Ministers Attending the Meeting of the Joint U.S.-Japan Committee on Trade and Economic Affairs

It is a very great pleasure to welcome you here.

These meetings are testimony to the friendship that unites two great nations. They are infused with a sense of urgency--and of confidence. The problems of Asia and the Pacific provide the urgency; the record of America and Japan in these past years inspires the confidence.

Each of us can learn from the other's experience with the problems of modern urban societies: how to cleanse the environment, how to transport and house our people, how to enrich the lives of individual men and Women.

We share other problems as well, inherited from the past. We in America welcome the opportunity to explore those problems with you.

Together, we face the vast problems of an Asia straining to achieve a better and more secure life. We have seen hope stir in hungry lands--and we have responded to it. The world's future stability demands that the peoples of the Pacific find their way, in peace, out of the agonies of the past.

One heartening development is the growing spirit of regional cooperation in Asia-a spirit which Japan has strongly helped to promote.

America's own commitment to Asia is firm. Our two nations do not always see our responsibilities in the same light. But we in America will always welcome your wisdom and counsel.

There is much that we can do together.

We share the experience of growth and prosperity. And out of that, we share a knowledge which can change and enrich the future of our neighbors.

It is our task to work in partnership toward a goal worthy of the greatness of our people: the progress, the peace, and security of the Pacific.

These meetings help show us the way.

I ask you now to join with me in a toast: Gentlemen, His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan.