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My Lia Massacre, By Ron Haeberle

1522 Words7 Pages

Reading Response Two

In the village of My Lia in Vietnam on March 16th 1968 roughly five hundred innocent Vietnamese villagers were executed by, an enraged United State army called Charlie Company which, after decades of being covered up and buried to keep the United States Armed forces images polished will go down in the annals of war history as the My Lia Massacre. Sgt. Ron Haeberle a photographer with Charlie company snapped pictures of burned homes littered with charred villagers and corpses strewn through the dirt paths along with other war photos, which Haeberle published to Life and Time magazines in November of 1969 catapulting the crimes committed to national as well as international spotlight.
On March 15th 1968 Capt. Ernst Medina …show more content…

Haeberle, with a camera in hand took still black and white photographs of some of the atrocities being careful to not capture any of those who’d taken place in executing the innocent while on assignment for a division newspaper. Also, carrying a color camera, he secretly was able to take pictures of the massacre that had happened, and those responsible taking the color images back with him when he returned to the United States. Which helped the breaking of the story wide open when he gave the images to Life magazine causing national and international …show more content…

Of those twenty-five who stood to be convicted only five of them were tried resulting in four being acquitted of charges. One of the extreme examples of the resonating effects of those who partook in 1968 My Lia Massacre was soldier only referred to by his last name Simpson. Upon arriving back home to Mississippi his son was shot and killed accidently. In a 1989 televised interview trembling and shaking Simpsons pointed to a scrapbook with the photograph inside stating “This is my life, this is my past, this is my present, this is my future and I keep it to remind me.” He viewed the loss of his son as punishment for his involvement in the massacre. Being diagnosed with paranoia from the event and under heavy medication Simpson after four failed attempts committed suicide in 1997. Haeberle’s pictures of the atrocities eventually became some the iconic symbols of the Vietnam war alongside famous Vietnam pictures as Eddie Adam’s 1968 photograph of the execution of a suspected Vietcong and Nick Ut’s 1972 image of a young Vietnamese girl running through a street after being scorched by napalm. These photographs tell compelling stories of defenseless women, and child be raped, and or killed, calling into question the American

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