Until today, I had never heard anything about Mai Lai. I think it was horrible, and seeing the reaction of the Vietnamese woman was unlike anything I had seen before. Even 20 years later, her grief seemed so...fresh. I can't imagine going through, wittnessing, and telling about this massacre; watching it was hard enough.
So, I just wondered what everyone thought of "Remember Mai Lai".

The horrific episodes of American forces in Mai Lai were unbelievable. The documentary did its purpose in stirring up feelings of sadness and remorse but I did not understand what the main purpose of watching the documentary had to do with our class... I know that we have had recent conversations on when obedience is appropriate but I just think the movie was too extreme for the situations we were discussing. Hopefully in the next class period I will be able to understand the main point of watching the documentary...

This could be a bit off topic for I have a way of doing that some times, but if you can get through some of the Hollywood drama, the movie's Platoon with Charlie Sheen and Apocolypse Now with his father tell a story a lot like the one at Mai Lai. I think the point their trying to get across in all three is that the human mind is out to find sanction in any way possible. While we sit here at our computers and type about how wrong it all is and how can people do what they do, people right now are going through some of those same feelings they had to go through 40 years ago. I'm in no way saying that it's right and to be truthful, despise what happened. But I do understand that when things have to be done within less than a second, the form of action is not always the desired one.

I think the point of watching this film was to show us that people are trained to be obedient and to follow orders. It ties in with the article we had to read. It blows my mind that the military is trained in that manner, but like the film said some things were timed incorrectly and that was not known to the soldiers who were sent with orders to kill the people. I do not agree with war or killing in any way, but that was how they were trained and that is what they thought they had to do when the arrived on the island. I believe that is why the film was shown, to tie in with the article we had already read about why people can't disobey.

This film I did not anticipate on seeing but as I was reading our assigned readings before class it really put the thought in my head about how people can be conditioned to do certain things. My greatest interest is the Holocaust and I have constantly aked my dad (a history buff) how people could allow that to happen or how they thought it was okay. This is very similar to the film. As they were saying, they went into a different mind set and were trained to kill. I find this hard to believe because my cousin will be deployed in June and I could not imagine him being trained to kill anyone. I think once you are told to do something and told everyone else is doing it and that it is for the greater good, that some people can condition themselves that it is okay. Personally, without being in that position I have no idea how I would feel or what I would do. In any case, it's such a horrible event and the fact that it still lives on today shows what an impact it really had.

Like Crystal, I had never heard of Mai Lai before watching the video. Until recently, I wasn't very interested in history but now I am paying more attention because I have realized the value. It was very difficult to watch and was not at all what I expected to see in class on Tuesday. I do understand how it related to the reading but it was still hard to see and I feel horrible for what happened to the whole village.

I agree with most of what has been said on here, and going back to our readings for Tuesday. I think it is amazing how people can be trained or conditioned to go into the mindset that it is ok to do things like Mai Lai as long as everyone else is doing it. Sort of like the study in the reading where people were shocking others with voltage just because they were told to, and even though they were not REALLY shocking the people, they continued to amp the voltage. It really makes you think about the things we or anyone would do when told to, simply because of the way we have been brought up, not to go against the norm. Just as Casey mentioned the Holocaust, how did people not realize that millions were being killed in concentration camps. How did we as American's think this was ok?

Personally, movies like Remember MyLai are movies that I do not like to watch. I really get emotional and my first instinct is to turn them off. Even though I feel this way, I really enjoyed watching a part of it because movies like this help to bring reality to students. Informational movies like this one, although very detailed and descriptive, help kids to not onyl understand the facts of events but the real life emotions that go along with them. Emotions of people from events are not what is taught to kids in textbooks. This is why I think that movies like Remember MyLai should be used more in the classroom for students to get on a personal level with people who went through tragic events like this one and to have an understanding for the subject.

I agree with what Katie said. Although these types of movies can be hard to watch, I feel like they should be used more in classrooms because somethings are easier to understand when seen first hand. Some kids get tired of learning history straight from the textbook, I know I did, and this can help students to better understand what really happened. It shows the side of a situation that most people do not want described in a textbook. I also think that people wonder about why the Nazi's did what they did during the Holocaust, but they do not realize that Americans have done the same thing to an extent. I watched a movie in my Learner Diversity class that Americans sent Native Americans to Wounded Knee and massacred them all. They put them all in one area, similar to a concentration camp and wiped them out. It does not matter where you live, if there is that much hate towards a certain type of people, people will do anything.

While watching this documentary was moving and sometimes very hard to watch I have to ask myself why did we watch this in class? I think this is trying to show us to not mindlessly obey a leader. Not only are we learning more about a event that has affected our country it is also displaying what happens when people get caught up in doing what they are told to do. I think it connects to the "Gary situation" that we discussed during class. Are you going to do what you are told or are you going to seriously take a step back and look at the situation. While MyLai was an awful massacre, the soldiers involved were doing what they were commanded and they thought that MyLai was a center for the Viet Cong. While this does not justify the innocent killing of women and children you have to ask yourself where they really doing something wrong? If they truly believed this was the enemy, as the principal believed Gary was the enemy, were they doing something wrong?

This video was very difficult to watch in class but it ties in with the article we had to read about obedience. It is hard to believe an entire village was wiped out, but it is harder to know that the soldiers were trained and told to do exactly that. Like the man in the video said a few times, sometimes he acted simply because the other soldiers around him were doing it and he felt compelled to act as well. It shows how much of an effect peer pressure can have on people and this is important to understand because our students will face their own pressures in school. While they may not be as drastic as killing someone, issues like drinking, drugs, and hazing are also important.

I also agree with Kim. One of the most fascinating lines in the documentary that caught my attention was when the soldiers kept saying that they were trained that way, to kill, and at points they questioned why they were doing this and it broke their hearts to kill the women and children. I remember one of the soldiers asking are you sure we kill everyone?? It was also interesting to hear several of them say in their interviews that the next day, they knew they had done something wrong and wondered why they had done it. It makes you wonder how things would have been different if some of the soldiers refused to kill the women and children or did not carry out their orders fully.

I also think that the video was very difficult to watch. I had actually never heard of Mai Lai until class. It made me realize that I always hear about whenever the US defeats a group of people or something like that, but never really these types of topics. It seemed like alot of the soldiers when told to fir were unsure and did not really want to. I cannot even imagine what is going to go through their minds the rest of their lives. This is something that they have to live with the rest of their lives. It was really sad to hear about the stories the people of Mai Lai told, especially the one who had the older sister who was raped. It makes you realize that innocent people were killed when they did nothing wrong.

This may seem off topic as well, but there was something brought up in the film that was really interesting to me. The narrator brought up the point that the defense given by most of the soldiers of Charlie Company, of "just following orders", was the same defense given by Nazi soldiers and officers during the Nuremberg Trials following World War Two. I am in no way turning American soldiers into Nazis, but the members of Charlie Company did participate in a massacre. I don't think that the video did an adequate job of giving the background of the state of the Vietnam War when the My Lai massacre occurred. Before the attack on My Lai village, the infamous Tet Offensive had just ended. After years of American generals telling the American public of success in beating the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces in numerous engagements, the Tet Offensive proved that those efforts were not enough. The Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces attacked all the major cities in South Vietnam on the Tet Holiday in January of 1968, and succeeded in part by taking several towns. Eventually pushed back by the US forces and suffering terrible losses, the Tet Offensive never the less showed that even though US troops felt they had been beating the Communists in a conventional war, they fighting the wrong war. Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces were not going to fight the Americans in a pitched battle, rather they were going to use guerrilla tactics and hit-and-run missions. By employing this strategy they were able to increase the paranoia of the American soldier, who became nervous that every Vietnamese person could be a Vietcong or North Vietnamese soldier. I think that this increased paranoia enhanced the soldiers of Charlie Company, and hardened them, making them more susceptible to killing an unarmed village. This is not meant to exonerate the soldiers, but just to explain the stresses that were going through their minds at the time this occurred.

Kyle

I had heard about Mai Lai but I never knew that it was that awful. It was amazing to see the photos of the devastation. I never imagined that the US military could have done something so terrible. The grief on everyone's face, this long after the massacre, was...there were no words. I couldn't look at some of the pictures. I know how it feels to have a family member taken away before their time, so I can only imagine how the few survivors felt having their entire family taken away from them like that.

I know that the military teaches you to follow orders regardless, but I don't know if I could have done that. I don't think I could have lived with myself if I had.

I know quite a few Vietnam veterans and on the occasion that they have opened up to share their experiences, the atmosphere of fear and paranoia is pervasive. What happened at that village was a perfect storm of paranoia, fear, self preservation and lack of discipline. They weren't professional soldiers, they were kids drafted to fight a war against arguably the best guerrilla force of all time. One of the veterans that I know was a helicopter gunner and admitted that a lot of times he had no idea whether he was shooting at a NVA guerrilla or a civilian

After watching the movie, I had several reactions. First, I was very emotional like some others. It was incredibly hard to watch and it was hard for me to understand why the soldiers were able to do something horrific. I could barely relate. But after thinking about it, I would have probably been just as terrified to disobey my officers and my fellow soldiers and go against the machines that the men were turning into. I think that it was good that we were able to see this video because like others, I had never even heard of anything like Mai Lai. I think that being aware of things like this is the only way for people to recognize change. Until reading the article that went along with this idea of disobedience, I never thought of being obedient as a bad thing. I am now more aware of how we need to teach our students to recognize what they are submitting to and not to become blindly obedient.

I really like in particular something that Karie said, which is that we see these terrible things that other countries do in Rwanda and other oppressive nations and Americans can oo and aa and call them a terrible people, when we do exactly the same thing: apparent in the movie. Other countries don't just not like the US for no reason at all. There is a reason why we're the bad guys in "love actually". Depending on your side, one may or may not consider our business (in a few months past business) in Iraq as another example of America being and doing things we don't need to be doing.

One more thing that i think is worth mentioning because I have seen a lot of posts mentioning that it's hard to draw a line because these soldiers were just doing what they were trained to do. Some even said that they did EXACTLY what they were told, and while I am there with the concept that they were following orders, but somehow I don't remember ever hearing about the military being trained to rape young girls. Kill, the end. nothing more or less. The fact that they took it to the next level demonstrates two things: 1) men in the army are really horny, and 2) they were experiencing a power-trip of epic proportions. I think that when the soldiers are ordered day in an day out "go here... march there... east now and sleep later..." that when they finally get a little decision making -in this case how they get to kill a man- they run with it. Same as with the prison 'guards' and the 'prisoners'. they could have just told them to "stay in their cells, eat here, don't fight" but instead they did crazy things like making them pretend to be frankenstein and his wife, and weird crap like that.

I would have to say that I had never heard of this specific incident, but watching this video really made me think of how easily we will give up our free will and moral values in high pressure situations. I could not believe that people could act in this way especially after the reactions of the world after they found out about the genocide in the holocaust. It really made me think that our future students could easily be influenced to do things harmful to themselves and the people around them due to negative remarks peer pressure and constant stress possibly due to negative situations at school and home. At first I wondered really what this video had to do with our class, but after seeing it and thinking about it I really understand. This video is to help us see that people can be easily influenced to do wrong things and as teachers we are going to have to be the person our students can turn to for help when they need it. We are going to have to be highly aware of what is going on in our students lives if we want to protect them and our class/classroom.

I was also shocked and heartbroken by the video. I never have really enjoyed history either, so I hadn't heard of Mai Lai. It was really terrible to see what happened there many years ago, and honestly what could be and what has happened in Iraq. I don't really know why it made me think of Iraq, but I have 3 friends who are heading there soon, and one who got back last year and may have to go again. The one who has already been is a completely different, mean person. He angers easily and is always so tense and seems to always be thinking about it. I don't know what he saw over there because he doesn't talk about it, but he may have killed people over there and he probably saw death. War is terrible and shocking, and like someone said before, they are trained to kill. The men fighting in Mai Lai were told what to do and many didn't even second guess it. Our human nature is sad and sometimes pretty shocking to me.