Editor’s Note: The spelling “Viet Nam” in this article is intentional, per the author’s request. The original sovereign name of the country is Việt Nam, most commonly transliterated into English as Vietnam. Starting in the early 1960s, U.S. newspapers used variations such as Viet-Nam, Viet-nam, and eventually Vietnam. Increasingly, Viet Nam (and Viet Namese, to describe the people) are coming back into usage. Similarly, city names like Sai Gon and Ha Noi are also being used by some English-language writers.
Huge parades in Ho Chi Minh City this spring marked the 50th anniversary of April 30, 1975, when a North Viet Namese army tank crashed through the iron gates of the U.S. Embassy in Sai Gon. The military took the lead in the parade, but it soon changed to beautiful peace floats, music, doves, flowers, and thousands of workers and children, along with colorful cultural costumes.
Although Viet Nam is looking to the future, the past is always present, and the same is true in neighboring countries, as well. During the so-called “Indochina War,” Viet Nam, along with Laos and Cambodia, received more explosive power than World War I and II combined. It remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history.
Maybe that’s why one sign at the massive June 14 protests in the U.S. protests read “Gaza is Arabic for Viet Nam.” One wonders how the Viet Namese feel with the U.S. dropping 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs to attack Iran.
Viet Nam’s transformation since the war’s end is reflected in the luxury shops and full hotels, adding to a 7% positive GDP in 2024. It’s true that vast income gaps are widening, but quite a few boats are rising as well with the economic growth. In the country’s capital city, Ha Noi in the north, new apartment buildings are as tall as corporate towers, with low-income and affordable new housing, too. Tourism accounts for 15% of the boom, as travelers are attracted by the natural beauty and affordable prices.
But there’s another element unique to this place, a feature that draws so many to come here. Call it admiration, respect, curiosity; this element is evident in the fact that the single most visited place in the entire country, for foreign and domestic tourists, is the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
Three encounters on a recent trip to Viet Nam exemplify this phenomenon.
Tour guide Hong
Hong is a 26-year-old guide at the UNESCO World Heritage Ke Bang National Park, famous for its spectacular limestone river caves. Per Viet Namese social norms, he is married with a young child. Fluent in English, and well-versed in the natural sciences, he squires boatloads of mainly young adventurers to several of the cave complexes and the river water park. His knowledge and interests also range far beyond his country, when he asks if America’s mid-term elections might make a positive difference in the Trump regime’s destructive policies.
Promotional material for the caves trumpets the fact that “entire regiments of NVA (North Viet Nam Army) troops sheltered in the caves from American bombing during the war.” When the subject of the war is brought up, Hong explains that Quang Binh Province has the unfortunate location of being immediately north of the 17th parallel’s DMZ, as well as being in the narrowest “waist” of the long coastal country, where the Ho Chi Minh Trail had many branches.
“It was bombed flat,” he simply says. His elders have told him of the many civilians who hid in the caves from U.S. B-52 Stratofortresses, and the at least one time when a cave entrance collapsed from the fire power, trapping those inside. “The people outside tried so hard to reach them, but after several days, they were all dead,” Hong said with genuine sorrow. But the most painful story came after more conversation and acknowledgement of the crime that was the U.S. war against Viet Nam.
Hong’s voice and expression changed as he revealed his family’s story. “When my mother was only 2-years old, her mother was killed in the carpet bombing.” So, his grandmother never lived beyond her early 20s, and his mother lost her own mother as a very young child. During lunch in a nearby town, Hong made a point of walking to the back garden to show a 6-foot-tall spent shell, hidden behind a large boulder, so few tourists would notice it. An average of 1,000 Vietnamese are still being killed every year by unexploded ordnance, and 1,300 are permanently injured annually. Hong said some American tour customers don’t like it if he talks about the war.
Viet Namese-American veteran John Nguyen
John Nguyen (not his real name) was conscripted into ARVN (the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam), the military of the south, which was created and funded by the United States. He likely had no choice and worked in Sai Gon more in intelligence than in combat. He said some whom he identified as Viet Cong suspects were assassinated.
Exiled to Southern California, he and his wife waited until their two children were out of university and able to move away before he joined the local chapter of Veterans For Peace and marched openly in parades. John chose to link up with Americans who had also fought in the war against “the Communists,” but who had chosen to reject their role in what they came to view as an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of a sovereign country.
John’s decision was a brave one, and his family suffered recriminations from the local Viet Namese-American community. Unbeknownst to many in this country, six Viet Namese-American journalists and community activists were assassinated in the U.S. starting in the early 1980s for their “turning against the war.”
So strong were John’s feelings of guilt and fear that he suffered a heart attack when he first returned to south Viet Nam ten years ago. He has recovered, lives a healthy life in southern California, and has since made regular trips back.
A cooperative for “the disabled”
In Ninh Binh city, just four hours south of Ha Noi, a well-to-do couple have funded a small clinic to treat disabled children and adults. They own a large restaurant that is a regular stop for tourists to the Trang An Landscape Complex, a series of lovely lakes flanked by towering karsts connected by limestone tunnels accessed by hand-rowed small boats—another vastly popular tourist spot.
Their first three children are accomplished young adults, but their last child, a girl, suffers from cerebral palsy and stunted size. The clinic started in 2020 and is now cooperatively run. Of the two dozen who come for treatment and therapy, however, several have the classic bodies of Agent Orange/Dioxin (AO/D) victims.
The chemical defoliant was sprayed all over the south of the country by the U.S. military over a period of 10 years (1961-71) in order to kill off all the vegetation so that the U.S. military could spot and target North Viet Namese soldiers and National Liberation Front fighters.
Normal-looking cute children, accompanied by a parent, are seated on mats awaiting their turn to be monitored by a young male doctor and his assistant. By the jerky movements of these young patients, one a baby of just a few months, it is clear to a layman that they were born with cerebral palsy, a result of myriad possible factors. In Viet Nam’s case, prolonged conditions of war, displacement, and lack of food and medical care weakened entire populations, as war has everywhere throughout the ages.
Additionally, at least three of the adults who come regularly to the clinic are classic examples of birth defects caused by AO/D. One man has a body the size of a 10-year-old child; another, a woman, stunted arms and legs; and another man a disfigured face, perhaps with Down Syndrome as well. It is a reality that those who were exposed to the chemical weapon had children that were affected, now going into the fourth generation.
American veterans now receive treatment and compensation from the effects of warped DNA, but not their children or grandchildren. Needless to say, the Viet Namese victims have never been acknowledged, and with USAID cuts, the meager few who benefitted are again abandoned by the United States. A stated goal of General Secretary To Lam of the Communist Party of Viet Nam is universal healthcare—ambitious, but achievable by such determined people.
Viet Nam is doing well and is making sure they never again experience invasion and war. There is a gigantic, newly-opened Viet Nam Military History Museum just outside of Ha Noi, showing literally centuries of combat against invaders, displayed in highly professional exhibits via: animation, photos, artifacts, ample text, films, news clips, even entire jets suspended from the ceiling.
The American War is there, too, but now 50 years in the past.
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