Kim A. Wagner

Sometimes you don't even need Isaac Chotiner to do a Chotiner...

50% off books from Yale Universoty Press - including 'Amritsar 1919', the first volume in my massacre trilogy. Perfect Christmas present for that special one in your life who is into atrocities (and the history and afterlives of the British Empire in India)

Spent veteran's day with Ron Haeberle and a group of Vietnam veterans at a high school in Ohio. I'm still trying to make sense of the particular brand of popular politics that instills unquestionable pride in military service *and* at the same time acknowledges what happened at My Lai...

'World' is doing a lot of work here...

Currently visiting Ron Haeberle - the army photographer who took the images at My Lai in 1968 - and nothing could really have prepared me for seeing the original 35mm slides in person.

Spot on

Good to know that Samar, My Lai and Abu Ghraib were all *departures* from the American way of making war.

Some weapons-grade US exceptionalism (i.e. acute historical amnesia) from Jonathan Horn here...😑

www.wsj.com/opinion/sple...

Love the cognitive dissonance of a William Morris print amidst the doilies...

open.substack.com/pub/martindb...

The youngest wanted to be an android geisha for Halloween - one more addition to the collection...

Very likely

Well, that's exciting - Michael Mann working on a new Vietnam war movie:

Massacre Under the Starry Flag | Vicente L. Rafael The history of a single photograph reveals how an atrocity in the Philippines was forgotten by its American perpetrators.

During the Philippine–American War, the US Army’s massacre of between 600 and 1,200 civilians made for “sensational news in the United States when it was first reported…. Eventually the event disappeared from popular consciousness and barely figured in popular accounts.” —Vicente L. Rafael

Massacre Under the Starry Flag | Vicente L. Rafael The history of a single photograph reveals how an atrocity in the Philippines was forgotten by its American perpetrators.

More people were killed during the Bud Dajo Massacre in 1906 than at Wounded Knee and My Lai combined - and yet this American atrocity has been largely forgotten.

Review of my book 'Massacre in the Clouds' by @vrafael82.bsky.social in @nybooks.com:

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

For a second, I thought that was a typo...

Just bought this on Ebay for $5 - Alfred (of 'Mad Magazine' fame) as Lt. Calley, 'National Lampoon', August 1971

Nope

If only someone had written a book about this particular form of historical erasure...🤔

🤬

My current project on the My Lai Massacre is heavily influenced by the polyphonic structure of 'Rashomon'/'In the Grove' - and it's quite reassuring to find that contemporaries themselves drew that comparison. This commentary is from December 1969, just after the story first broke:

Not really a fan of Chomsky, but he was quite perceptive and clearly ahead of his time when he denounced the use of 'remote-controlled unmanned aircraft' in 1970, during the Vietnam War...

Very much so

As a historian, writing about the past - no matter how violent or horrific - increasingly feels like escapism...

🙏

I've seen it irl - incredible!

There were no Marines at Bud Dajo; the troops who participated in the assault included 4th Cav, 6th and 19th Inf, a small naval contingent from the gunboat 'Pampanga', and a company of Philippine Constabulary.

My approach to research these days is to read absolutely everything I can put my hands on that will help me get the 'feel' of an event or time-period right.

Next up is Jean Larteguy's (author of 'The Centurions') fictionalised account of the disappearance of Sean Flynn in Cambodia in 1970...

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The original is in the National Archives - you can't download it anywhere, unfortunately

I'm listening to the Lewellen recording of the pilot communication at My Lai for the first time. In the background, you can hear the wop-wop-wop of the Huy choppers and follow the progress of the operation minute by minute.

Is there any other massacre in history that was audio-recorded live?