Silence is not so Secretive: History of American War Crimes

  The United States of America has a long, established history of war crimes. Nobody can deny that, but many people do not know about this, and no one asks why. The United States government hides behind excuses for what it has done to supposedly ‘move the country forward,’ and those excuses go back many years.

  One of the first documented instances of American war crimes is the Sullivan Campaign, lasting three and a half months in 1779. Led by George Washington and General John Sullivan against the Six Nations, their main goal, in George Washington's own words, was to "[enable] total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more." [1] The majority of the Six Nations (also known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, or Iroquois) at this time were allied with the British, with agreements such as the Covenant Chain, and were fresh off the French-Indian War, in which they had allied with the British. [2] Over forty villages were annihilated by the end of the campaign, not including isolated homes. [3] One hundred sixty thousand bushels of corn were burned. No prisoners were taken. Only three years later, ninety-six Moravian Christian Delaware men, women, and children were murdered in what came to be known as the Gnadenhutten massacre. [4]

  During the Philippine-American War, which lasted from 1899 to 1913, a multitude of war crimes were committed, including the Pacification of Samar, multiple massacres, and concentration camps. During the war, entire towns were wiped out with no restraint, and many men, women, and children all across the Philippine islands died extremely brutal deaths. [5] The Pacification of Samar took place as retaliation for the Balangiga massacre in 1901. General Jacob Smith, the head of the pacification, ordered, “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me ... The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness …” (New York Times 2).  His minimum age to kill the indigenous Waray people of Samar was ten years old.  [6] The Moro Crater massacre occurred during the Moro Rebellion in 1906. The Moro Rebellion was a result of hundreds of years of resisting foreign rule from the Moro people, and the Americans trying to take over their land were less than pleased. American soldiers attacked Tausug civilians hiding in the crater Bud Dajo, murdering nine-hundred and ninety-four men, women and children. Concentration camps, or “reconcentration zones,” were a staple to impose control on Filipino civilians during the Philippine-American War. Conditions were abhorrent, and many died of starvation and disease. Racism against Indigenous Americans and Black people was used to justify the killings at the time. [7]

    In the American occupation of Haiti, lasting from 1915 to 1934, the occupation forces brought these racist views with them to the Black Haitian population, bringing back corvée. Corvée is a form of intermittent, unpaid labor, and was used to draft Black Haitians into constructing roads and highways for the occupying Americans. According to James Weldon Johnson, a prominent Black civil rights activist from this period, in his book Self-Determining Haiti, “But the Occupation seized men wherever it could find them, and no able-bodied Haitian was safe from such raids, which most closely resembled the African slave raids of past centuries. And slavery it was—though temporary. By day or by night, from the bosom of their families, from their little farms or while trudging peacefully on the country roads, Haitians were seized and forcibly taken to toil for months in far sections of the country. Those who protested or resisted were beaten into submission. At night, after long hours of unremitting labor under armed taskmasters, who swiftly discouraged any slackening of effort with boot or rifle butt, the victims were herded in compounds. Those attempting to escape were shot.” (Johnson 14). [8] [9] The corvée system kick-started resistance to American occupation in Haiti by the cacos, resulting in the Second Caco War, in which protesting Haitians were violently repressed, as they were during the First Caco War. In 1929, American soldiers opened fire on one-thousand and five-hundred peaceful Haitian protestors on strike, killing twelve people and injuring twenty-three more. This is now known as the Les Cayes massacre, and was one of the catalysts for President Herbert Hoover to withdraw from Haiti in 1934. [10] [11]

   During World War II, starting in 1942 after Pearl Harbor, hundreds of thousands of Japanese-American men, women, and children on the West Coast of America were rounded up by the WRA (War Relocation Authority) and put in internment camps. The conditions in these camps were harsh and cramped—  with minimal privacy in harsh weather, and many were put to grueling work cutting wood or making camouflage nets, the latter often resulting in “skin irritation and breathing difficulties” as a result of horrible working conditions. (NPS). There was also a severe lack of safety equipment for the jobs they had to take up in the camps. Once they were released in 1945, they only got $25 and a train ticket. [12] [13] [14]

  In North Korea, Koreans were bombed without distinction for three years, killing almost 20% of the population and destroying civilian livelihoods. Entire cities were destroyed by the U.S by the end of the Korean War – so much so that according to Bruce Cumings, author of The Korean War: A History, states, “Pyongyang had been razed to the ground, with the Air Force stating in official documents that the North’s cities suffered greater damage than German and Japanese cities firebombed during World War II.” [15]

  In Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed and raped by invading American soldiers, and their country was brutally bombed. The most infamous massacre of the U.S military in any foreign war is the Mỹ Lai massacre in Mỹ Lai 4 and Mỹ Khê 4. On March 16th, 1968, 504 people were slaughtered, the vast majority of whom were women and children. History.com explains, “American soldiers stabbed, clubbed, and carved “C [for Charlie] Company” into the chests of their victims; and herded them into ditches and blew them to bits with grenades. One soldier recalled cutting victims’ throats and chopping off their hands.” It was a disgusting case of following orders blindly– a man made the order, and 504 innocent people died for it. It was covered up by the U.S military for 20 months. Commanders lied to government officials, saying the ‘fight’ was against the Viet Cong. Only one war criminal, William Calley– the man who gave the order– was convicted of any crime. It was not just the Mỹ Lai massacre, either. American soldiers all across Vietnam had been acting this way, fueled by racism. “Kill anything that moves,” was a commonly followed order.  [16] [17] [18]

 America covers up these crimes to this day because the current administration does not want change. They push these ideas of racism and imperialism to divide us, because if we were united, we would realize that change to a system that allowed these crimes in the first place is so desperately needed. I know many people out there think that change is impossible– that nobody could ever organize change. But it is possible. People need to work together to dismantle the systems that allow these things to occur, and repair them. Then, we may finally see an end to the long list of American war crimes.

Works Cited  (APA7)

Washington, G. (2002, March 20). George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779. https://founders.archives.gov. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0661

Haudenosaunee Confederacy. https://www.britannica.com. (n.d.). https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haudenosaunee-Confederacy

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). The Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779 (U.S. National Park Service). https://www.nps.gov. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-clinton-sullivan-campaign-of-1779.htm

Mar 08, 1782 - Nearly 100 Indigenous People Massacred by Pennsylvania Militiamen. calendar.eji.org. (n.d.). https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/mar/8

Filipinos During the War. https://www.umich.edu. (n.d.). https://philippines.michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/s/exhibit/page/filipinos-during-the-war

New York Times. (n.d.). President Retires Gen. Jacob H. Smith. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/07/17/101959147.pdf

George Mason University. (n.d.). American Soldiers in the Philippines Write Home about the War. https://historymatters.gmu.edu. https://web.archive.org/web/20260416231226/https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/58/

Dalleo, R. (n.d.). The Corvee. bucknell.edu. https://occupationundead.scholar.bucknell.edu/2018/10/01/61/

Johnson, J. W. (1920). Self-Determining Haiti. Nation Associates.

Danticat, E. (2015, July 28). The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti. https://www.newyorker.com. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/haiti-us-occupation-hundred-year-anniversary

Arizona Daily Star. (2021, April 22). 1929 Cayes Massacre. https://tucson.com. https://tucson.com/news/1929-cayes-massacre/image_c89bc0f7-d61b-54be-ac38-c6c2af0cfcdc.html

Incarceration of Japanese Americans. nps.gov. (n.d.). https://web.archive.org/web/20260525172220/https://www.nps.gov/rori/learn/historyculture/incarceration-of-japanese-americans.htm

Denshō. (2025, May 1). The Labor History of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII. densho.org. https://densho.org/catalyst/labor-history-japanese-american-incarceration-wwii/

Heart Mountain. Life In The Camp. heartmountain.org. https://www.heartmountain.org/history/life-in-the-camp/

Cumings, B. (2017, August 13). Americans once carpet-bombed North Korea. It's time to remember that past. https://www.theguardian.com. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/13/america-carpet-bombed-north-korea-remember-that-past

A&E Television Networks. (2025, May 28). My Lai Massacre. History.com. https://www.history.com/articles/my-lai-massacre

A&E Television Networks. (2025b, October 28). How the Army’s Cover-Up Made the My Lai Massacre Even Worse. History.com. https://www.history.com/articles/my-lai-massacre-1968-army-cover-up

BBC. (2013, August 28). Was My Lai just one of many massacres in the Vietnam War?. https://www.bbc.com. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726

American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). Memo regarding the torture and military interrogation of alien unlawful combatants held outside the United States. https://www.aclu.org. https://www.aclu.org/documents/memo-regarding-torture-and-military-interrogation-alien-unlawful-combatants-held-outside

Macdonald, A., & Baghdad. (2006, July 11). Iraq Girl in Troop’s Rape Case Just 14. https://www.theage.com.au. https://www.theage.com.au/world/iraq-girl-in-troops-rape-case-just-14-20060711-ge2ott.html