My history teacher had never heard of the Bangladesh genocide

I was writing back in March about how nobody at school seemed aware of 1971. Now, I have an actual narrative for that, coming from the research process of my spring AP Lang paper. It is something that I’ve wanted to write down for months.

After telling my teacher, who, for the most part, I love and admire as an educator, that I would like to use the 1971 genocide for my research paper, which was an unexpected departure from the provided list of subjects, she asked if I could quickly outline the topic for her; since she apparently hadn’t heard of it before. This also completely shocked me – she teaches this class every year and discusses a substantial number of other 20th century atrocities in far too much detail, it seemed like. But eventually I wound up relaying her essentially the same information as I’d relayed to my friends in March, the contents of which, once again, she thank me for, stating that no student had ever approached her with that particular topic before in all her years of teaching.

My actual research for the paper introduced me to and consumed a dimension of it which was far deeper than I had predicted: the role of American diplomat, Archer Blood (the US's top official stationed in Dhaka in 1971), and his entire contingent of staff sending a confidential cable to Washington, in which they essentially accuse their own government of a moral failure for siding with the Pakistani military in its war against its own citizens. It states: "In Washington at least, support for Pakistan despite official assurances against any assistance being furnished with that aid contributing to or having as its primary purpose internal repression or political violence toward civilians". Nixon and Kissinger read this document and their continued support for Pakistan continued unabated simply because Pakistan was necessary to the normalization efforts that the US was working to establish with China at that time; Blood and his staff were largely ignored.

A detailed account of these events, among a plethora of others, can be found in the book titled "The Blood Telegram," by Gary Bass.

It’s the first entire book that I’ve read about the war that wasn’t compiled family stories, told sporadically.

This, though, didn't even shock me to as great a degree as discovering that there was an entire verified paper trail indicating that, to the people in positions of power, exactly what was occurring during that war was being accounted for in real time by others-and they deliberately chose to overlook it all for reasons of "political advantage". The topic isn't simply "a section of history that's been forgotten". Instead it's essentially a section of history that, according to the people in charge, was deemed an unworthy casualty of our political interests to be remembered by more than the few.

I submitted the paper, and received an A. I know that, given the subject, this is sort of a ridiculous things to mention, but I feel as though it’s the most hard work I’ve produced on an assignment all year in high school. Afterwards, my teacher pulled me aside.

She has apparently decided to make that aspect a point she teaches in her units during the class next year, which, while it doesn't make a world-shattering difference, can never-the-less provide an extra classroom full of people who would otherwise have just left my school exactly as my friends had done: oblivious.

I'm willing to accept that much more than zero, at the least.