40 Years and 1 Day

Trip Start Dec 28, 2007
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18
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Trip End Dec 01, 2008


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(Quang Ngai hotels)

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

March 16, 1968 was the day of the My Lai massacre.  On March 17, 2008, on our way to Quy Nhon (a beach town north of Nha Trang, pronounced "kinyon"), we left our hotel at around 12:30. About ½ way to Quy Nhon, we stopped at Son My, the site of the My Lai massacre. If you ask a Vietnamese taxi to take you to My Lai, they will have no idea what you are talking about. I think My Lai is a name coined by the US. All locals call the village where the massacre occurred Son My. Son My is 8km to the west of Quang Ngai, which is a mid-sized coastal town. Son My was and still is a small rice-growing village which now also has been set up as a memorial.

On March 16, 1968, Charlie Company of the US Army entered Son My village and killed 500 men, women and children. They also burned the village to the ground and killed the livestock. This incident in very well documented in US History, perhaps best so in the book "Four Hours in My Lai." Not one shot was fired by the Vietnamese villagers in resistance Diagram of Former Village
Diagram of Former Village
 . The only injury suffered by a US Soldier was when one soldier shot himself in the foot to avoid having to participate in the massacre. The incident was hailed as a success at first because of the high "body count," an important indicator of victory in the warped US war effort. It was not until November of 1969 that the truth came out about what really happened at Son My, and only because several of the GI´s involved broke ranks and fessed up to the atrocity that occurred.

Forty Years and 1 day later the site is now a museum, a graveyard and a monument. Even having been there before, the site was no less moving or disturbing on this visit. It is also much more developed as a memorial and has a new museum which documents the horrors of March 16, 1968.  The day before we were there this year, there was a 40th anniversary memorial for the victims.  The local newspaper said 2000 people showed up, including some of US veterns involved in both participating and stopping the massacre.  The day we were there (March 17), the site was virtually empty.  It is a very sad and very somber place.  This was our second visit to the site.  The first visit was about 4 years ago and at that time we were accompanied by a former South Vietnamese Army General who had an interesting take on the incident, quite different from ours.  This time, we wandered around the site by ourselves, feeling the tremendous loss and sorrow in every inch of the memorial.
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