Fish Sauce

the last few days here have been really intense.
We took a day trip to the My lai (my son) massacre site.
Dreading having to say goodbye to the kids, and visiting another orphanage which houses 30+ children with disablitiys many caused by dioxin exposure (agent orange).

firstly My Lai
the site of the mass murder of 504 unarmed citizens of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), almost entirely civilians and the majority of them women and children and the elderly, conducted by U.S. Army forces on March 16, 1968. Some of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the dead bodies were mutilated.

Young girls sheltering behind their mother
dressing after american soldiers raping
before killing them.

Ron Haeberle [the army photographer] jumped in to take a picture of the group of women. The picture [above] shows the thirteen-year-old girl hiding behind her mother, trying to button the top of her pyjamas.

When they noticed Ron, they left off and turned away as if everything was normal.

Then a soldier asked, "Well, what'll we do with 'em?"

"Kill 'em," another answered.

I heard an M60 go off, a light machine-gun, and when we turned all of them and the kids with them were dead.'

The cover-up of the massacre began almost as soon as the killing ended. Official army reports of the operation proclaimed a great victory: 128 enemy soldiers dead, only one American casualty (one soldier unintentionally shot himself in the foot). Colin Powell, then a major, was implicated in writing the cover-up report denying any massacre took place or any wrong doing on the part of the American soldiers. Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, ran a feature story applauding the courage of the American soldiers who had risked their lives. Even General William Westmoreland sent a personal congratulatory note to Charlie Company.

A year later, by which time the whole world new about the massacre, a mock army investigation was ordered. Even that investigation, with its obvious biases, revealed enough evidence to charge 30 soldiers with war crimes. Only one soldier, however, was convicted - Lt William Calley, commander of the platoon, and he only served 3 days in prison! After the third day President Nixon ordering that he be released from prison to be held in the comfort of his home where he could entertain guests, cook his own food, keep pets and live an easy life. And after 3 years of house arrest this mass murderer was paroled and later pardoned - a free man, and was last seen working in a jewelery store in Columbus, Georgia!

Lt.William Calley
CRIME: Genocide
PUNISHMENT: Jailed for 3 days
AMERICAN JUSTICE IN ACTION!

“ He fired at [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him. ”
about a baby in this photo

Our guide showed us a ditch were 170 people (woman and children mainly) were shot and dumped.
A underground shelter where a gradmother her daughter and 3 grandchildren (aged 6, 3 ,1)were hiding, which a soldeir just tossed in a grenade.
We heard about a mother with her 6month old baby , they took the baby off the mother so they could rape her. then shot her, Later returning to kill the baby by shooting it in the mouth. then burning there bodies.

on the memorial there are 504 names with thier ages ...just so many children...babies , woman, elderly, farmers...

after seeing this the iminant treat of death in a public mini van on the trip home didn't seem like a big deal,
with a driver with a death wish/ or thinking this was play station (yep and also the knowledge that there is a very high accedent rate with these mini vans). The drivers race other vans.. yep leap frog round trucks buses at 120km/h and each other to get to the next village first (so they can get the passangers waiting) a bit of an adrenaline kick.

Secondly Agent orange the gift that keeps on giving...

Weve can see the effect on the land sometimes as weve traveled, there are still areas when trees/ grass struggle to grow apart from the odd eculiptus tree (but aparantly they grow anywhere have very deep root systems or something!?)

But it's the effect it still has on people that is the most chilling, even though the wars been over for 30+ years, You still see babies, children, of all generations suffering birth defects because of it. I've seen children in the market , or as you bike by with typical agent orange defects such as Large head syndrome, or buldging eye, or blindness. It didn't really hit me till we went to an orphanage in Hoi-an today and there was a room with 30+ disabled children and i saw up close and in mass the extent of this constant suffering being passed through the generations.
I cuddled a 3 month old baby whos head was the size of a basketball, I feed lunch to children with limbs so twisted and deformed they you struggle to identify whats a hand or a foot. Children who look as though the top of thier head is missing or has caved in....
.
.

it makes me fill with tears and rage that these kids live 30 to a room covered in bed sores , and the orphanage struggles to care for them while.
So far, the U.S. has offered nothing. Yet the U.S. Veterans Administration gives more than $1,000 per month to former American soldiers exposed to the same dioxin. "It's so arrogant,"

At the moment leaving vietnam feels like a relief.... time to regroup to try and get my head round all this, a relief to be far away that maybe i can get out of feeling guilty that i'm not doing more/ that i can't do more. But the images of these things and the kids we've been working with will always be calling me back. i wonder how long i'll be able to stay away.