Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781541701496)

In this "forensic, unflinching, devastating work of historical recovery" (Sathnam Sanghera), Bud Dajo--an American atrocity bigger than Wounded Knee or My Lai, yet today largely forgotten--is 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 'Battle of Bud Dajo' was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a "brilliant feat of arms" 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 massacre--which claimed hundreds more lives than Wounded Knee and My Lai combined--reveals the extent to which practices of colonial warfare and violence, derived from European imperialism, were fully embraced by Americans with catastrophic results.

Author: Kim A. Wagner
ISBN-10: 1541701496
ISBN-13: 9781541701496
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Language: English
Published: 05/07/2024
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.60w x 1.50d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2024