Walter Mondale, a leading liberal Democratic voice of the late 20th century who was U.S. vice president under Jimmy Carter and lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election, died on Monday at age 93, his family said.

“Well my time has come. I am eager to rejoin Joan and Eleanor,” Mondale said in a statement to his staff and released to the public after his death, referring to his late wife Joan, who died in 2014, and daughter Eleanor, who died in 2011 at age 51.

“Before I go I wanted to let you know how much you mean to me.”

Mondale, the first major U.S. party presidential nominee to pick a woman running mate, believed in an activist government and worked for civil rights, school integration, consumer protection and farm and labor interests as a U.S. senator and vice president during Carter’s troubled one-term presidency from 1977 to 1981.

He also served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996 under Bill Clinton.

The Japanese government Tuesday expressed its condolences on the death of former U.S. Vice President and Ambassador to Japan Mondale. 

“We offer our condolences from the bottom of our heart,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a press conference.

Kato particularly referred to the effort of Mondale that led to a 1996 agreement on the return of the site of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air base in Okinawa Prefecture, southwestern Japan.

The Japanese government will make full efforts to have the Futenma site be returned as early as possible, Kato said.

Reuters/JIJI Press