XtremeJibber2001 wrote:The appearance of the President of the United States, embracing a Japanese citizen hurt in a war caused by his own countrymen, on the heel of Memorial Day weekend was unbecoming.
You're absolutely right. A US President should never embrace people, whether literally as Obama did, or figuratively (as FDR and many others have done) who were hurt in a war caused by their own countrymen. Veterans who tried to kill each other should not do it either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Gettysburg_reunion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The 1938 Gettysburg reunion was an encampment of American Civil War veterans on the Gettysburg Battlefield for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The gathering included approximately 25 veterans of the battle with a further 1,359 Federal and 486 Confederate attendees out of the 8,000 living veterans of the war. The veterans averaged 94 years of age, Transportation, quarters, and subsistence was federally funded for each veteran and their accompanying attendant. If an attendant was needed it was provided. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's July 3 reunion address preceded the unveiling of the Eternal Light Peace Memorial; a newsreel with part of the address was included in the Westinghouse Time Capsule for the 1939 New York World's Fair.
July 3, Sunday. Sunday morning memorial service in college stadium.
- Veterans shook hands across the stone wall at The Angle as during the 1913 Gettysburg reunion.
- Attendance for the Eternal Light Peace Memorial dedication was 250,000 (100,000 were "stuck on automobile-packed highways".
- As Roosevelt's 9 minute address ended at sunset, the Peace Memorial covered by a 50 foot flag[16] was unveiled by George N. Lockwood and Confederate A. G. Harris (both age 91) with 2 regular army attendants.
- Army aircraft staged a simulated air raid on Gettysburg[ at dusk, and searchlights were directed from the ground at the planes while they dropped flares.
And, if you go back to the 50th anniversary of the battle...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Gettysburg_reunion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The 1913 Gettysburg reunion was a Gettysburg Battlefield encampment of American Civil War veterans for the Battle of Gettysburg's 50th anniversary. The June 29–July 4 gathering of 53,407 veterans (~8,750 Confederate) was the largest ever Civil War veteran reunion, and "never before in the world's history [had] so great a number of men so advanced in years been assembled under field conditions" (Chief Surgeon). All honorably discharged veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic and the United Confederate Veterans were invited, and veterans from 46 of the 48 states attended). Despite concerns "that there might be unpleasant differences, at least, between the blue and gray" (as after England's War of the Roses and the French Revolution), the peaceful reunion was repeatedly marked by events of Union–Confederate camaraderie. President Woodrow Wilson's July 4 reunion address summarized the spirit: "We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor."
Wounds heal. Enemies can become allies/friends and even countrymen. Time moves on.