materials taken from James Loewen's website
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops...We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
(Martin Luther King Jr.)
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| Kim Phuc and other children running on Highway 1, Vietnam, 1972 (Photograph by Nic Ut, AP) |
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| The national police chief executing a terrified man, a member of the Vietcong, with a pistol shot to the side of his head |
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| A Buddhist monk sitting at a Saigon intersection immolating himself to protest the South Vietnamese government. |
American involvement in the war took place from 1965 to 1973. To recall the above photographs, Americans must be well over forty years. "Young people have little chance to see or recall these images unless their history books provide them.” And YET, student textbooks have silenced the Vietnam War, offering little to no information for students concerning this historical war. The little information that has been given to students in their history textbooks fails to show any damage done by our [American] side. For example, atrocities committed by the U.S. such as the My Lai massacre, which was the mass murder of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam by the U.S. army, are touched upon briefly and justified in student textbooks:
These are questions to consider when instruction in the classroom cheats students out of knowledge and exposure to historical events. Despite the atrocities that history has spun in its path, students have a right to know, even if certain events illustrate an unpleasant picture of the past. Why should today’s future be left out of our nation’s past?
Kim Phuc
Kim's Story, The Road to Vietnam (2006)
The Power of a Picture: The Napalm Girl (ABC7, 2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoq-_jj1x6Q
