My Lai, Vietnam

My Lai (Son My) - darkometer rating : 9 - A massacre site in South Central Vietnam – here, in a former rural village area happened what is often considered to have been the worst of the war crimes committed by the USA during the Vietnam War . > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations More background info: On 16 March 1968, US soldiers entered the village of My Lai (pronounced "me lie"), and My Khe, in a "search and destroy" mission. They did not find any Vietcong fighters there, only civilians – and these were massacred in the most brutal way, mostly women, children and old men, all unarmed. This is about as far as agreement about the incident goes. Figures for the death toll vary, the official Vietnamese figure is 504, and the latest American figure stands at 347. Confusion also arises out of the fact that there was more than one location, My Lai being only one of them, in the larger village area known as Son My. The motives of the US soldiers are not entirely clear either. Some sources say they were angered by recent losses of their men through booby traps and mines, inadequate leadership is sometimes adduced as an "explanation", sheer bloodlust as another, and it's argued that it was an incident that somehow just "escalated out of control". An even more disturbing picture emerges from interviews that independent filmmaker Joseph Strick conducted with six of the soldiers who had been at My Lai (an Academy award winning documentary from 1970).