Week 5 - Jesse Huang

In "Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence" by Darrell Y. Hamamoto, the author recounts a collection of atrocious mass murders and racially directed serial killers in an effort to draw a connection between the heinous acts of these murderers and the militaristic backgrounds from which they stem. Hamamoto lists several cases of murders where the killers themselves had some sort of tie with the military. Some either were war veterans, others were discharged for misconduct and violent behavior. However, a central theme emerged from these horror stories, that these murders were likely the result of military time and experience. Several murderers participated in the Vietnam war, and Hamamoto describes how their military background led these killers to specifically target a certain racial group, asians. These murderers were believed to only target asian ethnicities due to the fact that they harbored hatred and animosity towards these groups. Hamamoto believes the likely source of these feelings comes from the Vietnam war itself where numerous hate crimes and acts of violence were performed upon civilians during wartime. Hamamoto emphasizes how these veterans would kill,beat, rape, and violate women of asian descent and provides several accounts of such horrible stories. As I read this article, I became more and more repulsed and disgusted by the horrific acts and mindsets behind these crimes. Every consequent story I read contributed to the piling shock value I was experiencing. I found myself appalled by these violent criminal acts and questioned the motives of these individuals. Truly there is some sort of heinous backstory to birth of these race murders and an appalling explanation to accompany it. The occurrence of race murders that occur within America and under the pretext of war has little exception to being different things.

From where do these violent race crimes stem from? Militaristic backgrounds? or fueled by bigotry and literature generated hated?

 Hamamoto, D. Y. (2003). Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence. In Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire (pp. 277-291). New York, NY: New York: Routledge.

“The Powerful Vietnam War Photos That Made History.” The Powerful Vietnam War Photos That Made History | Here & Now, www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/03/31/vietnam-war-photos-associated-press.