The My Lai museum is one of the toughest places to visit as an American, but it is laid out as a sad, but peaceful place. The site is the actual village of My Lai, once a peaceful hamlet of the village of Son My, and Anthropogists have laid out a few foundations of houses, and bomb shelters, and one reconstructed peasant house. The foundations are designed to look like burnt huts,with statues of dead animals lying around it. Walkways between gardens are laid in cement with many footprints imprinted-small and large barefoot prints like a busy path in a village, and then, horribly, the large bootprints of American soldiers. The ditch where Lt.Calley and the 11th brigade lined up some 200 civilians and shot them,is filled with water and planted on the slopes. There are many donated trees and plantings from peace groups around the world and several statues of people in grief, and a Guernica like tile mural of the attack.

The small museum building is an emotionally draining place.The first thing you see is a large wall size bronze with the names and ages of the over 500 civilians killed in 2 days at My Lai, many,many children.The next display is a larege photo of the American helicopter pilot,Lt.Hugh Thompson who tried to stop Cally, and another large photo of the young American journalist who told the story and the American army photographer who took and kept the condeming photos. It is quite remarkable and compassionate to have these men honored here-we don't even remember their names in the U.S. Then there are the actual pictures-awful and heartbreaking war pictures of civilians being terroized and killed-corpses everywhere. and pieces of lives lost, a baby's shirt, a boy's torn school book. There is a well known photo of an old woman with a gun to her head, another of a man trying to shield his children. A full size diarama shows three U.S.soldiers with hate filled faces gunning down children and old people. and very very sad to me,there are 4 photos on the wall of young American soldiers who took part in the massacre. I see them as victims too and know they were wounded in their souls.

We went back to the peaceful gardens after the terrible displays and amazingly, we met two old women (80s) who survived the massacre forty years ago. The government has allowed them to grow rice on their old family plots. Marge talked to one and Tinh and I to another who was working her plot with her grand-daughter. She showed us her injuries and told us her story.She was one of the 6-7 people saved by Thompson and he had come back to visit her before he died. She saw her husband and one daughter and many neighbors killed by soldiers.Her entire village destroyed. We ended up giving the women money as they were still very poor.One woman told Marge, "If I take the money what will you eat?"I thought a moment about it being a "tourist trap,"but decided that no amount of money could make up for carrying those memories. And they were still growing their food,so not getting rich. She hugged me tightly and I felt so much loss for all of us. The place is quite remote and has few visitors except on anniversary days (March 16),but many veterans make their way there.That must be so hard for them.

Marge commented that the AFSC group working in Quang Ngai at that time (March 1968) knew about so many massacres in this disputed region that they could notunderstand why people were focused on My Lai. I think that the answer is that this was a story that got told, first of all.Most stories did not.Second, the fact that three young Americans were the ones to tell it mattered to the whole world. And still does. We left the place and went to worship at the Peace Park down the road. The peace Park has been built by Madison Quakers..