We found the Vietnam Veterans Monument both interesting and touching. A few moments here is a worthwhile stop for veterans or anyone touched by war.

... I really wanted to see when I went to Pittsburgh that day. It's located along the North Shore Riverwalk where there are plenty of other things to check-out like the WWII and Korean Veterans' monuments. Because I used to live there, Vietnam War monuments have special meaning to me. I was also a kid at the time of that war, and I remember it to be a period of like there was a knife in the heart of the country. I don't remember anyone I knew who supported that war. It was a time that you knew something was seriously wrong with the country and lot of the people in it, sort of like now with the president and all. Glad he's almost gone. Hey this monument looks real nice. Got some actual words in Vietnamese (and English) that are etched on the ground. The statues look like they're veterans coming home being greeted by their families. One is of a white veteran reaching out to grab his kid from his wife - for sure this is a homecoming scene although the kid is the only one smiling for some reason. The other is really two statues of a black veteran and his wife (mother?) which stand - I don't know - maybe 15-20 feet apart from each other. The veteran kind of looks dazed as he approaches the other statue. The woman has her arms sort of outstretched with a kind of an almost indiscernible look on her face. I'm not sure if the look is overwhelming joy because she sees him and he's coming home or severe grief but he is far away from her and maybe not coming back. Also her hand positions remind me of Buddhist mudras. I looked up the meanings of these hand positions, but I'm not sure how applicable that is here. So I also thought that maybe the white soldier came home and the black soldier didn't which could be symbolic or a microcosm of a lot things about the US and systemic racism. Probably I'm reading too much into it. The words that are written down on the floor are what they are though. In Vietnamese and English, they say: Grant Us Peace.