[Petition 5] "Screams in the village every night"

Posted on : 2019-04-21 15:47 KST Modified on : 2019-04-21 15:47 KST
Massacre at Tây Sơn Tây village, Duy Hải commune, Duy Xuyên District, Quảng Nam Province (massacre at old Mr. Nho’s air raid shelter)
Nguyễn Tan Quy

Date of birth: Registered as 1942; actual birth year 1940

Date of massacre: Nov. 12, 1969

Description of massacre: I was eating breakfast with my family at around 6 am when we heard the sound of shells. I was a member of the guerrillas, and the young men from the village and I fled to avoid the South Korean troops. The villagers and family members remaining behind in the village hid in the air raid shelter at old Mr. Nho’s house. The South Korean soldiers soon swooped in on the village. They dragged the residents out of the air raid shelter and assembled them in a bamboo grove next to it.

The soldiers first asked the residents if they were “VC” (Viet Cong). Then they opened fire on them. The people who were hit by bullets died on the spot. The South Korean soldiers threw a grenade toward the people who hadn’t come out of the air raid shelter. After the soldiers left, the other young people and I returned to the village around five in the afternoon. We went looking for our family members among the bodies, which were so badly damaged that it was hard to make out their features. My mother Lê Thị Lạc (hen 62), my wife Ngô Thị Khuê (23), my two daughters Nguyễn Thị Huệ (five) and Nguyễn Thị Bé (one), and my son Nguyễn Tấn Sang (three) all died that day. I was 24 at the time.

Not knowing when the South Korean troops might return to the village, I had to bury my family and leave the village in a hurry. I wrapped the bodies up in scraps of parachute and raincoats I’d picked up from the area, and I buried them quickly in the ground. I placed five stones there so I’d be able to find the grave site again later on, and I left the village. Fortunately, the markers were still there when I returned to my hometown after the war ended in 1975, and I was able to give my family members a funeral. At night, I could hear people crying and screaming in the village. I couldn’t be there anymore, so I moved to another village. My neighbors also couldn’t bear to live in the village. They began leaving one after the other; today, the village has disappeared completely.

What I want from Korea: I want the South Korean government to acknowledge and apologize for the South Korean troops’ massacres of Vietnamese civilians before it’s too late.