TOKYO, Japan -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Monday apologized for his country's role in World War II on the 60th anniversary of the war's end, and vowed Japan would never again take "the path to war."

In a statement issued by his office, Koizumi acknowledged the "enormous damage" inflicted by Japan's military "by colonization and invasion" during the conflict.

"We must take this historical fact of such very sincerely, and I would like to express keen remorse and heartfelt apologies," Koizumi said.

"I would like to also express our deep condolences to the victims inside and outside of Japan during World War II."

At the height of the conflict, much of southeast Asia, China and the Pacific islands were in Japanese hands.

Japan agreed to surrender on August 15, 1945, after U.S. planes dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The formal surrender was signed on September 2.

Koizumi's apology was not the first to be issued by a Japanese leader.

In August 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the war's end, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama expressed Tokyo's deep remorse and heartfelt apology for the damage and suffering it inflicted on its Asian neighbors.

Koizumi made a similar apology for Japan's role in the war at an Asian summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, this past April. And in 2001, Koizumi apologized for Japanese treatment of Koreans during its occupation of the Korean peninsula during the first half of the 20th century.

At the time, he had been criticized for visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo honoring the war dead, including convicted war criminals, and several Asian countries had decried a school textbook approved by Japan that glosses over Tokyo's wartime atrocities.

Apart from Koizumi's statement, many Japanese held a moment of silence Monday as Emperor Akihito and other officials gathered to express sorrow and pledge to work towards peace.

And across the region Asians marked the anniversary by honoring their dead, burning Rising Sun flags and demanding compensation from Japan for wartime abuses, The Associated Press reports.

The occasion also inspired a rare joint commemoration by North Korea and South Korea.

Speaking Monday over a video link between the two Koreas, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged Koreans to come together to help overcome common problems.

"It's time for us to put an end to history of dissension, and open an era of national integration," AP reports Roh saying.

"This also means laying the grounds to surmount division, and to ring in a reunified era ruled by peace and prosperity."

Attending the event in Seoul was the North delegation led by Kim Ki Nam vice chairman of North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Fatherland. (Full story)

Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. While the war's end brought liberation, it also led to the peninsula's division and a stalemated war between North and South in 1950-53.

Elsewhere, former Australian prisoners of war returned to the Thai jungles where they labored under brutal conditions to build the notorious Death Railway. (Full story)

And China exhorted its citizens to remember Tokyo's surrender with "a fresh wave of patriotism," as state-run media whipped up memories of Japanese atrocities.

In China's anniversary events, national religious associations planned rites condemning aggression and praying for peace, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The northeastern city of Qiqihar put on an exhibit commemorating the death of a Chinese man two years ago from a mustard gas canister abandoned by Japan's army, the China Youth Daily reported. The leak also injured 42 people.

Japan invaded China in 1931. Its troops massacred as many as 300,000 people after taking the city of Nanjing in December 1937, and Japanese scientists performed germ warfare experiments on Chinese prisoners.

In the Philippines, Lili-Pilipina, a group of women who say they were forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army, demanded again that Tokyo compensate them, AP reports.

While some have accepted payments from the privately run Asian Women's Fund, the women want official compensation and acknowledgment of their suffering.

Tokyo has generally refused to pay damages to individuals for the war, saying the issue was settled between governments in postwar treaties.

Japanese courts have rejected a number of lawsuits brought by former sex slaves across Asia.