Titled ‘Mỹ Lai: Việt Nam, 1968 - Nhìn lại cuộc thảm sát’ in Vietnamese, the book provides a full description of one of the “darkest” events in the US’s military intervention in Việt Nam. Photo baotintuc.vn

HÀ NỘI — A Vietnamese version of the book ‘My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness’ by Howard Jones has been published by the Sự thật (Truth) National Political Publishing House, giving readers anther insight into the US invasion of Việt Nam.

Titled ‘Mỹ Lai: Việt Nam, 1968 - Nhìn lại cuộc thảm sát’ in Vietnamese, the 700-plus page book, translated by Mạnh Chương, provides a full, comprehensive, and truthful description of one of the “darkest” events in the US’s military intervention in Việt Nam.

It came as a result of an almost decade of research by Howard Jones, University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama.

Of the three parts, the first touches upon the causes of the pain by Mỹ Lai residents, the second analyses the massacre’s aftermath and the US administration’s cover-up, and the last is about what the US administration had to pay for the crime.

Unarmed villagers are killed by US troops in the Mỹ Lai massacre. File photo

Ralph B. Levering, author of ‘The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History’ said this is the best book by far on the Mỹ Lai massacre and its aftermath – "exhaustively researched, persuasively argued, and a page-turner to boot".

"A must-read for anyone interested not only in the Việt Nam era, but also in how things can go terribly wrong in the midst of armed conflict, the laws of war notwithstanding. Truly exceptional," he added. 

New York Times book reviewer Thomas E. Ricks said that Jones’s work is “at once painful and useful,” adding that My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent Into Darkness is “likely to become the standard reference work” on the subject.

The BBC’s Max Hastings, writing in the London Review of Books, calls Jones’s work a “cool, comprehensive” and as thorough “account as we are ever likely to have of this defining act of military barbarism.” 

On the morning of March 16, 1968, US troops entered four villages, namely Mỹ Lai 4, Mỹ Khê 4, Bình Tây and Bình Đông of Sơn Tịnh District, the central province of Quảng Ngãi, located near the demilitarised zone called "Pinkville" by the US. After three hours, more than 500 unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, were killed by US troops.

The atrocity, the Mỹ Lai massacre, took its name from one of the hamlets. — VNS