My Lai Massacre

I am educating myself about the Mi Lai massacre, one of the many atrocities that the U.S soldiers committed. To see this place was so moving to me and I remembered the massacres in El Salvador, the worst in a town call El Mosote where 1000 civilians were assassinated including babies. Only one woman survived to give her testimony of the horrific massacre. In the museum display, I read that 17 pregnant women were killed, and many children and old people among the five hundred and four. At the same time I was moved when I read about several Americans who burned themselves to death to express their opposition to the goverment. Only a few people survived the My Lai massacre which was stopped by two American helicopter crew.

I walked around the village and thought how terrifying it must have been for the people who lived here that day, March 16, 1968. I was shaking,trembling and thinking that I was once was in a civil war and it was horrible. I thought a lot about the people who died here and thought about my first husband and all my relatives, classmates, and friends who were killed in El Salvador. I empathize with the people of Vietnam because I know how it is to experience a war. War is hell and we should work together towards peace in the world so we won't have another American war. I took a course at San Francisco State University called "Genocide." We discussed the Holocaust and why it happened and that we should work together for peace and make a better world. We had another war in Iraq and now the Palestinian and Israel war. What about the massacre in Darfur? it seems like it never ends, I feel sometimes depressed about the wars but I know we have the obligation to speak out against them.