Visit to Ha My

Friday, March 08, 2019
Hội An, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam
Thanks for all your comments on my last entry..the collective wisdom is something like "take a good hard look at yourself" or "pull your head in", well, I'm looking and the head is pulled in.
Not a great story today but a sad one. I knew from my reading that there was a massacre near here during the American War and I knew it was at Ha My on the way to Da Nang but I looked a couple of times and never found any obvious memorial in the vicinity. Stupidly I had never looked on Google maps which allowed me to go straight to it this time. In 1968 shortly after the Tet offensive the South Koreans who were responsible for this area were attacked and a few officers killed. In response a team went out and slaughtered 136 civilians in a village of Ha My. They were never brought to justice as were Calley and Medina the culprits in the My Lai massacre and it wasn't until well after the war that a Korean peace group staged a mock trial and found the Army guilty of a war crime. The South Koreans committed many war crimes, but this was their most blatant. The bodies were buried in a mass grave and then the grave was bombed and napalmed to obliterate it, which was the most hurtful thing you could do to a Vietnamese as they place great importance on the persons body being buried in what they consider hallowed ground, in this case their home village.
Peace groups in Korea forced their government to make reparations and to formally apologize which they did quite recently when a group of Koreans visited this memorial and offered prayers. The story I read at the time said part of the wording on the memorial had to be covered up as it was too insulting for the Koreans to see. Now Hoi An is full of South Koreans walking in guided tours or being driven in Xichlos or bussed here and there. The few Vietnamese I have questioned have never heard of the Ha My massacre or they have forgotten intentionally.
If you can, zoom in on the names on the memorial which shows their year of birth, the oldest 1890 and the youngest the year of the event 1968, and it seems the last three were from the same family, two boys and a girl, perhaps triplets.

Comments

dennys
2019-04-02

Sad commentary on the madness of war. Great photos too.

Dennys
2019-04-02

Re your comments re readers' comments.....don't think twice about them, that is why your blogs are so good, your writing is from your heart and your honest emotions....

Jay
2019-04-03

Such sad history Les but very interesting

2025-02-10

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