My Lai massacre remembered

More a thousand people in Vietnam marked Friday’s 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, the most notorious episode in modern U.S. military history, with talk of peace and cooperation instead of hatred.

On March 16, 1968, the American soldiers of Charlie Company were sent on what they were told was a mission to confront a crack outfit of their Vietcong enemies, but met no resistance and over three to four hours killed 504 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children and elderly men in My Lai and a neighboring community.

Speaking at Friday’s commemoration, provincial official Dang Ngoc Dung said My Lai was a typical case of “cruel crimes committed by aggressive and hostile forces” during the war. He did not mention the US by name.

But Dung said Vietnam wants to set aside the past and befriend other countries to build a better future in which peace and happiness can thrive.

The commemoration comes at a time when bilateral relations be- the U.S. and Vietnam are the strongest they’ve been since their normalization of relations in 1995. The United States is now one of Vietnam’s top trading partners and investors, and relations have also expanded to security and defense.

Do Ba was 9 when American soldiers came to his house and rounded up his mother, three siblings and himself and took them to a drainage ditch. His mother and sibling were among the 170 people killed there.

Ba was wounded, covered in blood and buried under bodies. He played dead out of fear the soldiers would come back to kill him. He was finally rescued by a U.S Army helicopter crew that landed amid the massacre and intervened to stop the killing.

“Twenty years ago, I still harbored hatred against the American soldiers who killed my mother, brothers and sister,” he said “But now after 50 years as Vietnam and the United States together developed their relations, people set aside their pain and suffering to build a better society.”/