Kent State Shootings
May 4, 1970
Thank you for joining me for this Sunday Special commentary.
As with most everything, there are many ways to interpret things. Comments and questions are welcome. Please be respectful of others’ opinions if they should differ from yours.
For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below.
The Song
(486 words)
This week,
here on Substack wrote about the song Ohio by Crosby Stills Nash & Young. This is a song with simple lyrics but a deep, resonating meaning for many Americans over the age of 50.Scobi gives very important background to the story. If you are able to, please read his post at https://substack.com/inbox/post/120236523. The vocabulary is quite challenging, so I will provide a shortened version here, but I encourage you to read his article.
The event took place during the height of the Vietnam War. Many young men had gone to Vietnam and many had died there. Students across the country on high school and college campuses were protesting the war.
The president at the time was Richard Nixon. He was a conservative, and he believed that the U.S. had to win the war in order to defend its interests against communism.
In Kent, Ohio, students were protesting on the campus of Kent State University. Their anger led to violence, and store windows in the town were broken. Officials called in the National Guard, a form of national military, to stop the students.
On May 4, the students organized a rally on campus. The National Guard was sent in to stop the protest. The facts aren’t clear, but somehow, the National Guard started shooting at the students, killing four students and injuring nine more.
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming means the National Guard being sent by the government – actually, it was the state governor who agreed to send them in.
We’re finally on our own / This summer I hear the drumming / Four dead in Ohio: the students had no other choice but to stand up against the war. The sound of drums is the marching of the soldiers. It ended up with four students dead on campus.
[Verse]
Gotta get down to it: we have something to do, so we’d better start doing it.
Soldiers are cutting us down: soldiers are killing us.
Should have been done long ago: probably what people in power were saying about the “crazy” hippies and other people who were against the war. They might have thought that the anti-war protesters should have been stopped long before this.
What if you knew her / And found her dead on the ground / How can you run when you know? There were two women killed that day, Allison Krause (19) and Sandra Scheuer (20). The young men were Jeffry Miller (20) and William Schroeder (19). This line is asking other young people not to not turn their backs and to join in the fight to end the war that had now come to American college campuses.
Ten days later, in Jackson, Mississippi, police shot two students and injured twelve outside a campus dormitory at Jackson State University.
Many other websites have covered this song. I hope that this article will make the information a bit more accessible to readers.
VOCABULARY
resonating 共鳴する
challenging 難しい
communism 共産主義
rally 大会
injure 怪我をさせる
hippies ヒッピー (From Wikipedia: 1960年代後半にアメリカ合衆国に登場した、旧来の価値観や性規範に対抗するカウンターカルチャー の一翼を担った若者を指す。)
anti-war 反戦
protester 抗議者
accessible 分かりやすい