US vets build peace park at Vietnam massacre site
HANOI - U.S. veterans plan to dedicate a peace park at the Vietnamese village of
My Lai next week on the 33rd anniversary of the Vietnam War's most notorious massacre.
Project Director Mike Boehm said the park would be dedicated with a tree planting
ceremony at the village just south of the central city of Danang next Friday. The veterans will
also dedicate a school.
``Construction has begun on the peace park and it's reached the point where it's now ready
to have trees planted,'' he said. ''It's a symbol of new life.''
As many as 500 civilians were killed at My Lai on March 16, 1968, when troops from
Charlie Company of the U.S. Army's Americal Division ran amok during a
search-and-destroy mission.
Boehm, an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, is directing the peace park project on
behalf of the Quakers in Madison, Wisconsin.
He said he expected the ceremony would be attended by the surviving crew of a U.S.
helicopter who became heroes in the United States and Vietnam after risking their lives to
save 11 civilians from the massacre.
He said he was hoping pilot Hugh Thompson and door gunner Lawrence Colburn would be
reunited during the ceremony with Do Hoa, now in his 40s, one of the people they rescued.
An attempt to reunite them in 1998 was thwarted as Do Hoa was at the time in jail for petty
theft.
He was eight years old at the time of the massacre.
``He turned into a juvenile delinquent, which is certainly understandable enough after what he
had gone through,'' Boehm said. ``His whole family was killed in the massacre at My Lai.''
The U.S. lieutenant blamed for the massacre, William Cally, was convicted and sentenced to
life in jail. However, late U.S. President Richard Nixon later intervened and he was freed
after three years house arrest.
The Web site of the My Lai Peace Park is at
www.mylaipeacepark.com.
Reuters - March 9, 2001.
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