Bush and the Swastikas -Bob Greene
‘We were out at a hotel in Hawaii,” George H.W. Bush said. “Maui.”
He and Mrs. Bush had been in Maui during his first postpresidential years, he said, and had gone out for an early-morning walk on the beach to get some exercise and talk before the sun came all the way up and the sand filled with tourists. They were walking near the ocean when they encountered something someone had carved into the sand.
“A swastika,” he said.
He was startled. It was freshly carved, undoubtedly during the night. “And in the middle of it, the Star of David,” he said. “And next to it, another swastika.
“I got so mad. It was 6 in the morning, and I was walking with these Secret Service agents, and I was almost just crying.”
The World War II combat pilot who had become president of the United States stood there staring at the swastikas, on American soil. He thought of some of the men beside whom he had fought—men who had never made it home from the war, “people who gave their last breaths.” He knew that he would not be continuing with his walk. What he had seen, in the country he loved, had made him ill.
“Six o’clock in the morning,” Bush said. “I took a rake, and I said, ‘Let’s clean this up, Barbara.’ ”
He did it himself? The former president looked around for a rake and smoothed out the sand on the beach? “Yeah,” Bush said, his eyes somewhere far away. “Yeah.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bush-and-the-swastikas-1543786158 (paid subscription)
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