Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History
Kim A. Wagner In this âforensic, unflinching, devastating work of historical recoveryâ (Sathnam Sanghera), Bud Dajoâan American atrocity bigger than Wounded Knee or My Lai, yet today largely forgottenâis revealed, thanks to the rediscovery of a single photograph.
In March 1906, American soldiers on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines surrounded and killed 1000 local men, women, and children, known as Moros, on top of an extinct volcano. The so-called âBattle of Bud Dajoâ was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a âbrilliant feat of armsâ according to President Theodore Roosevelt. Some contemporaries, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Mark Twain, saw the massacre for what it was, but they were the exception and the U.S. military authorities successfully managed to bury the story. Despite the fact that the slaughter of Moros had been captured on camera, the memory of the massacre soon disappeared from the historical record.
In Massacre in the Clouds, Kim A. Wagner meticulously recovers the history of a forgotten atrocity and the remarkable photograph that exposed its grim logic. His vivid, unsparing account of the massacreâwhich claimed hundreds more lives than Wounded Knee and My Lai combinedâreveals the extent to which practices of colonial warfare and violence, derived from European imperialism, were fully embraced by Americans with catastrophic results.
Genres:
HistoryNonfictionWarCrimeAsiaAmerican HistoryMilitary FictionMilitary History
352 Pages