Today is the fortieth anniversary of the massacre at My Lai.
Many of you could probably guess how I feel about the Vietnam War, but I guess there is no harm repeating myself. We could have won it and it is a stain on the history of this nation that we did not stand with our allies in South Vietnam.
Part of the reason we did not win in Vietnam was those thankfully few acts like My Lai, which some say turned Americans against the war. Americans reasoned that we should not behave as the Nazis we defeated and the Russians we opposed.
The chief person that made My Lai public knowledge is Claremont McKenna alum and helicopter gunner, Ron Ridenhour.
Here Ridenhour and My Lai are mentioned in The San Bernardino Sun.
TODAY IS the 40th anniversary of a sad event, the My Lai massacre, one whose exposure we can credit to, of all people, a Claremont student.
By official count, 347 men, women, children and babies from the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai were herded into groups and killed by American troops.
The March 16, 1968 incident wasn't publicly known until later. In March 1969, an ex-GI named Ron Ridenhour, who had learned of My Lai while stationed in Vietnam and who interviewed several participants and eyewitnesses, wrote to the president, the Pentagon, the State Department and members of Congress.
Ridenhour studied literature at Claremont Men's College, today's Claremont McKenna College.
In an October 2004 appearance at McKenna, journalist Seymour Hersh said the campus held special memories for him. He recalled hearing about the letters, visiting Ridenhour in his dorm and being handed his research materials.
Hersh's exposé on the massacre was published in the New York Times in November 1969 and won a Pulitzer. Several soldiers involved in the massacre were indicted; one was court-martialed and convicted.
Ridenhour, who graduated from McKenna in 1972, went on to become a journalist - who wouldn't, with that start? - and won some awards himself. He died at age 52 in 1998.
I learned about Ridenhour's role from Hersh's talk. And now, after more than three years of patiently awaiting the My Lai anniversary, that's my exposé of a little-known piece of local lore.
Claremont McKenna spends so much time trying to teach leadership. I wonder if they ever look to the heroes and leaders who live and work among us. Sometimes courage is a young GI who dared to do the right thing.
I came across this quotation from him.
"Some people -- most, it seems -- will, under some circumstances, do anything someone in authority tells them to.... Government institutions, like most humans, have a reflexive reaction to the exposure of internal corruption and wrongdoing: No matter how transparent the effort, their first response is to lie, conceal and cover up. Also like human beings, once an institution has embraced a particular lie in support of a particular coverup, it will forever proclaim its innocence."--Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1993
Good advice for any institution, especially now.
