In a rare, if ever, interview, former Army lieutenant William Calley, who was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, sort of apologized for the first time last week, at a Columbus, Georgia, Kiwanis Club where he was speaking.
“In March 1968, U.S. soldiers gunned down hundreds of civilians in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. The Army at first denied, then downplayed the event, saying most of the dead were Vietcong. But in November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh revealed what really happened and Calley was court-martialed and convicted of murder.
source: William Calley apologizes for My Lai massacre” — Columbus Ledger –Enquirer.
Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968 in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre. Arguably Public Domain, see source
I was going to write about this, until the hurricane inspired surf screamed my name this past Friday. I’m home now, and though late I was going to make an attempt, but I it seems I always end up on that other road, you know, the one with no one on it.
A typical occurrence, when searching for information on troubling things, my searches often result in something more perturbing, and my focal point changes. While looking for photos of My Lai, the search brought me to the following photograph, via Radar Online.. I know it’s a rag, but it was one of the first sites appearing in my Google search for “My Lai”, and for that reason my attention diverted from the Calley apologizes BS, so bear with me .
Pulitzer Prize winning, Huỳnh Công Út photo of Kim Phuc (Napalm Girl)
A year or so ago Radar clipped something from an Andrew Sullivan post. It was a post noting that the photographer of the Pulitzer Prize awarded photograph (often called Napalm Girl, of a then 8 or 9 year old Kim Phuc), Nick Ut (Huỳnh Công Út), was now photographing Paris Hilton. Radar used the iconic photo, as had Andrew Sullivan. In their ignorance, and likely their readers ignorance, Radar titled the post My Lai Photog Still in the Trenches .
The My Lai Massacre occurred, of course, in March of 1968, Nick Ut’s photo was taken in June of 1972, after a South Vietnamese Napalm attack. With our ignorance growing by leaps and bounds, a dwindling knowledge of history, or it’s significance, a growing population of readers of Radar type sites, and that particular post coming up in Google on first search for “My Lai”, I thought it worth it to point this out.
As to why a photograph on an online culture, gossip rag, bothers me? Who can say. The fact it was one the first page in a search for My Lai makes it significant in my book. The photographs above may appear to be about they same thing, but it’s only ignorance that makes it so. They appear interchangeable because they depict the horror of war, unnecessary war, faulty philosophy and cracked policy. However, the My Lai photograph is about something more sinister, a deeper truth, the kind we like to ignore, discuss, divert, make excuses for, and disguise.
We need to know the difference, that there is a difference, between the scenario surrounding the Napalm Girl photograph, and that of the The My Lai Massacre, even if there is no difference apparent to some people, the people involved were different. They each deserve their own accounting — be it in history books or online gossip rags. Though motives were similar, the picture by Ut should be recognizable to every American past the age of high school as having taken place years after My Lai, as the South Vietnamese (with our blessings), Napalmed an area thought to be infested with Viet Cong. My Lai, we should know by heart. Yes, it might appear that only the severity, victims, and tactics changed, but it is important that we know them separately.
We shouldn’t mistake a picture of a Vietnamese girl in distress from Napalm burns in 1972 as part of a massacre almost 5 years earlier anymore than we’d confuse JFK’s assassination with that of his brother’s. These photos, or the places and times they occurred, should not be confused. They may appropriately be referenced on the same collage, but we must know the difference. It’s an injustice not to know.
If you don’t know about either of these situations, now might be the time to find out.
That’s it. A post from a diversion that occurred when, after reading about Calley’s apology, I decided to write about it, and a search for photos of My Lai brought me in a different direction.
Because of this diversion, I’m listing some links on My Lai Massacre posted both since or long before the recent “apology”.
Unabridged original dispatches by Seymour Hersh on the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
My Lai Massacre Leader Speaks
Vietnam Online/The American Experience/My Lai Massacre
My Lai Officer Apologizes For Massacre — NPR
Ex-Officer Apologizes for Killings at My Lai
Calley apologizes for role in My Lai massacre
THE MY LAI MASSACRE, Time archive 1969
The massacre is also known as the “Sơn Mỹ Massacre” or sometimes as the “Song My Massacre”. My Lai was one of four hamlets associated with the village of “Son My”. The U.S. military codeword for the hamlet was Pinkville. Pinkville is the name of a forthcoming Oliver Stone film about the My Lai Massacre.
Title from In These Times
