Bắc Ninh
Tale of children who survived My Lai massacre falls on deaf ears
He was six. She was 14 months old. They had just been shot, and watched their siblings and mother get shot.
As Tran Van Duc and his sister Tran Thi Ha escaped from the armed men carrying out a grisly massacre, a helicopter flew low over them. Duc threw himself on his sister to protect her.
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Tran Van Duc, six, covers his 14-month-old sister to protect her as a helicopter hovers low while they were fleeing the site of the My Lai massacre. |
Ronald L. Haeberle, a combat photographer on duty Vietnam, captured that moment.
While the photographic capture of Duc's valiant act became famous and emblematic of the struggle for survival waged by the residents of My Lai, the two children were virtually forgotten by history.
However, more than 50 years later, last month, the War Remnants Museum in HCMC acknowledged that Duc and Ha were the children in the photograph, that they were survivors of the My Lai massacre.
It took a decade-long, often frustrating and exasperating struggle to get this acknowledgement, and it is still not complete.
Since 2009, Duc has petitioned several governmental agencies, including the Son My Museum, the War Remnants Museum in HCMC, and the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Ngai Province, asking that the survival and existence of his sister Ha and himself be officially acknowledged.
His sister Ha, now 52, a teacher in Quang Ngai, still carries a bullet in her left chest.
Duc and Ha are also supported by the photographer who took their picture 51 years ago. Haeberle had assumed the children were dead, and never imagined that 43 years later, that boy would come knocking on his door.
When the two met, Duc recounted every little detail of that fateful day.
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Duc and Haeberle at My Lai on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre last year. |
When asked if he had thought about saving Duc and Ha, Haeberle said: "I was hoping they were alive. But I couldn’t intervene. It was not my mission to do so there, plus the soldiers could have turned against me...."
Haeberle’s My Lai photos, the publication of which he referred to as his "silent protest," were used during the investigation of massacre later.
Haeberle has visited My Lai five times, and he plans to pay his respects to the fallen for the last time on the 52nd anniversary of the massacre in March next year. But the journey has not ended for Duc and Ha.
Until the time of writing, only the War Remnants of Museum in HCMC, where their picture is displayed, has confirmed their existence and amended the caption.
Source: VnExpress
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