QUANG NGAI: It took Pham Thi Thuan a while before she could muster the courage to fetch water from across the ditch where 170 of her neighbours, most of them women and children, were killed by US troops during the Vietnam War.

“When I heard cats mewing at night, it sounded like those babies were still crying,” said Thuan.

On March 16, 1968, 504 people were killed by American soldiers in Son My, a collection of hamlets between the central Vietnamese coast and a ridge of misty mountains, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre.

It was the worst recorded US war crime committed in Vietnam, but preparations for a 50th anniversary ceremony at the site, now a memorial to the victims, are low key.

The ceremony falls just one week after a landmark visit by a US aircraft carrier to the nearby port city of Danang, testament to warming ties between the former foes.

Because of those better relations, Vietnam is not dwelling on the pain of the past, a senior Vietnamese government official told Reuters.

“Vietnam wants to close the door to the past and look to the future,” said the official, who declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Dang Ngoc Dung, deputy chairman of the Quang Ngai Province People’s Committee, said Vietnam wanted to “befriend everyone now”. “We won’t let anyone harm us again,” said Dung.

Vo Cao Loi was 16 when he saw American helicopters buzz low over his family’s house on the clear, sunny morning of the massacre.

That was not unusual, Loi said. American troops often passed through the area in then US-backed South Vietnam.

“We were used to it,” said Loi. “But we didn’t expect them to kill everybody.” Loi’s mother gave him a bag filled with rice and spare clothes and told him to hide.

He watched beneath coconut trees by a river as U.S. troops dragged women and children out of their houses and shot them.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2018