Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Nguyen Huu, 1981

Interviewer: When the Americans came on January 31st , where were you? Nguyen Huu: At that time, I cut across the road and a field and then fled. They started shooting around 1:00 p.m. At around 2:00 pm I began to go back to the hamlet. When I reached the hamlet at around 3:00 p.m., I saw corpses all over the places. They were women and children. All the houses and the buffaloes and cattle were all burnt. Nguyen Huu: That night when we buried the dead people, we just put four pieces of board together and put the corpse in there and buried it. When we ran out of boards, we just wrapped the bodies up with mats. We buried 105 persons. Nguyen Huu: We buried them at three spots. We buried twelve persons over there. Then we buried twenty persons at the spot where there is a chain over there. The rest of the bodies were buried in that large graveyard. Interviewer: Where were you on that morning of January 31st ?

Nguyen Huu: I was at home. Interviewer: Please give us more detail. Nguyen Huu: At the time I had just put up a hut because I was harvesting the sugarcanes then. I was tilling the fields at the time. The Americans came in over there and came out over here. Nguyen Huu: When they came over here, there were women and children. There were no men, only old men. There were only women and children. When they came over here, the children asked them for candies. And the women, some were eating lunch while others were pressing sugarcanes. Nguyen Huu: When the Americans came they shot in short spurts. I ran outside and, about half an hour after the first gunfire, flames were shooting up. And in about an hour and a half, they all left. I then ran back to the hamlet and saw all the dead. That night the regime concentrated the population and told them to bury the dead. Interviewer: One hundred and five persons were a lot of people. How could you get enough boards to make coffins for them? Nguyen Huu: Those families who had boards made the coffins. When we ran out of boards, we just rolled the bodies inside the mats and buried them. We just did not have enough boards. Nguyen Huu: In my family for example, the whole house had been burnt down. Only a charred door was left. We put the door underneath the bodies and buried them. Nguyen Huu: Twenty days later, when we were forced to turn up the graves, there were boards everywhere and the whole place looked like the scene of an aftermath of a battle. We then simply placed the bodies in the graves without anything around them at all.

Interviewer: Please tell us how these people died, how old they were, and whether they were women, young girls or children? Nguyen Huu: Only women and old people, there was no young man. Most of them either had their brains blown out, their bellies cut open by bullets, their limbs severed and, in most cases, they were disemboweled. There were three babies about a month old. They just smashed the babies and threw them into the fire. They did not shoot them. We saw them in the fire, just about as big as this.

Interviewer: When you buried the bodies what were your feelings? Nguyen Huu: The Americans were so unexpectedly brutal. My family was not engaging in anything besides agriculture. We concentrated all our energy and attention on plowing and hoeing in order to produce some food to eat. We were not engaging in any other activity besides. We did not participate in the Liberation Front . Nguyen Huu: And yet my family, including close relatives, suffered forty dead. They were children, old men and old women; they were flesh of my flesh. Interviewer: We want to ask you how many members of your family were killed and whether you buried them yourself.

Nguyen Huu: Now, at that time, we just buried people as we found them. So members of families were buried separately. We began to bury people from one end of the village to the other. We just could not pick out the individuals one by one. Interviewer: Please tell us the names of some of your loved ones who died during that incident. Nguyen Huu: Names you want? I just can't remember all the names. Interviewer: No, we just want only a few names.