Victims of Son My massacre remembered in US
The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC) organised an array of activities in the US from March 15-17 to commemorate 504 victims of the Son My bloody massacre by US troops 50 years ago.
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The same day, Professor Howard Jones, a VPCC member from Alabama University, hosted a programme to introduce his book titled “My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness” at George Washington University, Washington D.C.
At the same time, the 475-page English book was also introduced by the VPCC at Columbia University in New York.
On March 17 afternoon, the VPCC screed a 95-minute film at George Washington University, featuring acceptance of more than 125 US soldiers of the cruelty they committed or witnessed at the massacre.
The killings that occurred on March 16, 1968 in My Lai hamlet (now Son My, Tinh Khe commune), the central province of Quang Ngai, prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre is also credited with advancing the end of the American War because it significantly undermined public support in the United States for the war effort.
Some 504 unarmed civilians in Tinh Khe commune were slaughtered, mostly elderly villagers, women and children. Hundreds of houses, along with thousands of heads of cattle and poultry, and all food, were burned and destroyed that day.
Founded in September 2014, the VPCC seeks to tell the truth and learn the lessons of the US war in Indochina, and of the broad, diverse protest movement that ended the war.
