| My Lai was a very profound visit for me, and something I think
everyone should do. I'll show some of my photographs here, but I doubt
you'll really get the effect from them.
The statues below were made by survivors from the massacre in 1968.
If you look behind the statues, you see some areas that are raised
about a foot above the surrounding soil. Those areas are where the huts
were. |
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| I found this statue to be a bit too marshal for my taste. It was
obviously added by the communists to make a point, but I thought the
simpler ones made by the survivors were both better aesthetically, and
more effective at making the point. |
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| More of the raised areas where the huts were, and a plaque listing
exactly who was in which place. The ditch where most of the people were
killed is off to the left out of the picture. |
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| The museum was full of extremely harsh anti-American rhetoric. This
doesn't bother me because I think we deserve it, and it was good to
see. The communists are busy going around toning the rhetoric down to
try to keep tourist dollars coming in, and it was good to see at least
part of the old stuff while I had the chance. |
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| The list of people killed. Pay particular attention to the third
column in the expanded section. The word at the top is the Vietnamese
word for Age. They apparently had one and three year olds that
were not only communist, but Viet Cong as well. It's also striking
looking at the similarities between this plaque and the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. (which in my opinion is the best
war monument in the U.S.). I'm not sure which came first, but they are
strikingly similar. |
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