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Sơn Mỹ Memorial

memorial to victims of the My Lai Massacre in Son My, Vietnam

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ6983802 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Sơn Mỹ Memorial (Di tích Sơn Mỹ) is a memorial to victims of the My Lai massacre, which took place on 16 March 1968 in Son My, Vietnam. This was a war crime committed by United States Army personnel involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Tịnh district, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Mỹ Lai was actually the name of only one of four hamlets in the village of Sơn Mỹ in Quảng Ngãi Province. The event is referred to as the Mỹ Lai Massacre in the United States and the Sơn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam.

The memorial includes a museum and a large monument honoring the hundreds of civilians killed by American troops. It is located at the site of the massacre in Quảng Ngãi Province and includes the remains of the village of Sơn Mỹ. A large black marble plaque just inside the entrance to the museum lists the names of all 504 civilians killed, including "17 pregnant women and 210 children under the age of 13". A number of enlarged versions of U.S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle's photos of the massacre are shown inside the museum. The images are dramatically backlit in color and share the central back wall with a life-size recreation of American soldiers "rounding up and shooting cowering villagers". The museum also celebrates American heroes, including Ronald Ridenhour, who first exposed the killings, as well as Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Colburn, who intervened to save a number of villagers.

Editorial summary

“Sơn Mỹ Memorial” enters the record as memorial to victims of the My Lai Massacre in Son My, Vietnam. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Memorial, memorial and victims can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Memorial, memorial and victims.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Sơn Mỹ Memorial” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Memorial, memorial and victims provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6983802. Authority coordinates are 15.180, 108.886. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sơn Mỹ Memorial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.