Sources: Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre; Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai
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Stop “eating the enemy’s food and grabbing America’s leg. My Lai has many shelters and plenty of food. Move your family [back] to this good place”.
– Advice to the villagers from National Liberation Front operatives in the relocation camp
Villagers Return to My Lai
For at least a two-year period, My Lai had been bombed and shelled by U.S. planes and artillery. Many of the villagers left for a relocation camp. Not sure where to get the next meal, formerly independent and self-supporting families were doomed to sit idly, waiting for the next handout of food from the government.
In late 1967, family elders and community leaders decided it was safe to return to the village after carefully considering the experience of some villagers who had gone back to live in My Lai. This triggered a mass exodus from the camp. Returnees considered U.S. soldiers in the nearby My Khe military base to be friends.
The villagers had no way of knowing that after the Tet Offensive in early 1968, the military situation became highly unstable. They did not know that a “safe village” could become a site of mass death when it was labeled a “VC village” circled in red. My Lai 4 became Pinkville on a U.S. battle map.