GOOD MORNING. A remembrance of a week fifty years ago. On 4 May 1970 the war came home to America as the student demonstrations on the Kent State University campus led to the Ohio National Guard firing more than 70 rounds of live ammo into the protesters. Four were killed and a dozen more wounded. The event infused overpowering energy into antiwar demonstrations throughout the nation. Combined with the President’s 30 April call for support for our intrusion of ground forces, including American Army troops, into Cambodia, support for the war and the President began a cataclysmic decline. It was a gloomy day in American history. Read and weep as you read “Kent State Shootings”:
Ohio History – Kent State Shootings
Kent State Shootings: A Timeline of the Tragedy
The murder of four Kent State antiwar demonstrators by the Ohio National Guard was followed by fatal confrontations of students and the Mississippi state police on the campus of Jackson State. The shootings led to the largest student strike in the history of the United States with two and half million students on 700 college campuses protesting, rioting and refusing to attend classes or take final exams. Thirty ROTC buildings were firebombed and the nation’s governors ordered National Guard units to occupy 21 campuses in 16 states to restore order. President Nixon believed that the revolutionary youth movement was “determined to destroy our society.” He ordered the FBI and other agencies to expand counterintelligence opposition.
On the other battlefield, South Vietnam, during this week in May 1970, more than 100 American fighting men perished helping the South Vietnamese fight off the Viet Cong and 40,000 North Vietnamese invaders. The total loss of Americans passed 42,000 (16,000 more would die over the next three years of unwinnable war). More than 400,000 Americans remained engaged in the fight. In the air over Southeast Asia eight fixed wing aircraft were lost. Miraculously, all 12 American aviators involved survived. Details of the losses at:
Vietnam Air Losses…search the dates 4-10 May 1970.