Seymour Hersh, The My Lai Massacre: An Atrocity Is Uncovered: November 1969. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via pierretristam.com), 13 November 1969. “The Army is completing an investigation [November 1969] of charges that [William Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in a search-and- destroy mission in March 1968 in a Viet Cong stronghold known as “Pinkville.” Calley has formally been charged with six specifications of mass murder. Each specification cites a number of dead, adding up to the 109 total, and charges that Calley did ‘with premeditation murder… Oriental human beings, whose names and sex are unknown, by shooting them with a rifle.'”Hersh’s stories were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 13, 20 and 25 November 1969, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for International Reporting “for his exclusive disclosure of the Vietnam War tragedy at the hamlet of My Lai.”
Ron Ridenhour’s letter (29 March 1969) that began My Lai investigation
Ron Ridenhour, Ron Ridenhour’s letter to Congress and the Pentagon about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. 29 March 1969. “In 1969, Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon describing the horrific events at My Lai–the infamous massacre of the Vietnam War–bringing the scandal to the attention of the American public and the world.”
What Few Know About the Tonkin Bay Incidents
I.F. Stone, What Few Know About the Tonkin Bay Incidents. I. F. Stone’s Weekly, 24 August 1964. “The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public.”
Hiroshima
John Hersey, Hiroshima. The New Yorker, 31 August 1946. “TO OUR READERS: The New Yorker this week [31 August 1946] devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. The Editors.” Jon Michaud, Eighty-Five From the Archive: John Hersey. The New Yorker, 8 June 2010: “Perhaps the most notable feature of “Hiroshima” is Hersey’s precise and unadorned style, which simply records the facts and places the moral and interpretive onus on the reader.” Paris Review Interview with John Hersey, Summer-Fall 1986: “My choice was to be deliberately quiet in the piece, because I thought that if the horror could be presented as directly as possible, it would allow the reader to identify with the characters in a direct way.” John Hersey in a letter to historian Paul Boyer: “The flat style was deliberate, and I still think I was right to adopt it. A high literary manner, or a show of passion, would have brought me into the story as a mediator; I wanted to avoid such mediation, so the reader’s experience would be as direct as possible.”