Vietnam Revisited

Vietnam Revisited

Renée Gordon

“Those who do not remember the lessons of 

the past are condemned to repeat it.”  

George Santayana

Until recently everything I knew about Vietnam I learned from the movies. Just as the times changed and the storytellers varied, so too did my perspective on our participation. Hindsight may not be 20-20 but it does provide a greater sense of clarity and a broader view of events and their aftermath.

This winter, accompanied by five friends, I set out to visit all of the places I had read about. The staging grounds for occurrences that would forever change the lives of millions of Americans and Asians. Once in Vietnam I saw international hotels, gourmet restaurants and designer stores. There were luxurious fabrics, intricate carvings, fine artworks, spa treatments and nightlife, anything and everything to satiate the American appetite and earn our dollars.

I knew there was much more to the story and so I left the beaten path and sought the sites that relate the tales I wanted to hear, the story of the “American War” through their eyes.

In 1975 Americans pulled out of Vietnam, in 1976 the country was reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Saigon was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Eighteen years later the US resumed trade with the country and the following year, in 1995, the US reopened diplomatic relations and this January Vietnam was temporarily seated on the Security Council of the United Nations.

There are numerous sites within the country that interpret the American presence and the Vietnamese attitude regarding and response to the conflict, but there are four in particular that best capture a real sense of the times, Ho Chi Minh’s Tomb, the War Remnants Museum, Hoa Lo Prison (The Hanoi Hilton) and the Cu Chi Tunnel System.

Hanoi’s Ho Chi Minh Memorial Complex has achieved the status of a shrine for the Vietnamese and the number of visitors, both foreign and domestic, reflects the significance of his role in the country’s history. The people, ignoring his desire to be cremated and his ashes divided among three urns positioned on three mountains in the middle and northern and southern parts of the country, began construction of an elaborate mausoleum in 1973. The Soviet’s embalmed Ho’s body and it has been on view since 1975.

A short walk takes visitors to the two houses he chose to live in, rather than reside in the more elaborate Presidential Palace, from 1954 to 1969. A smaller house he resided in from 1958 to 1969 was built atop stilts and the tour takes you pass the area beneath the house used for meetings and to the upper level living room, sleeping quarters and working room. In adjacent buildings are the entry to his bomb shelter, car, and the small house in which he died.

The War Remnants Museum, 28 Vo Van Tan, Saigon, opened to the public in the same year as the mausoleum. The museum serves as an exhibition center and a repository for the information and artifacts that interpret the “war crimes and aftermaths foreign aggressive forces caused for the Vietnamese people”. Tours are self-guided and include outdoor displays of captured weapons employed by the US during the conflict, seven additional, thematic galleries and special exhibits. The eight permanent galleries are largely chronological and begin with the history that led to war.

A 30-minute film details the enormous number of children born with birth defects as a result of toxic chemicals as well as citing statistics on the thousands of people more recently killed by unexploded bombs that have never been removed. Over a ten-year period the US dropped more than 7-million tons of napalm on the country and huge amounts of defoliant and herbicide to denude the countryside. This museum, more than any other I visited, presented a documented Vietnamese viewpoint and for that reason I highly recommend it.

Hoa Lo Prison, referred to by Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton,” is considered a of international significance. The majority of the prison was razed in 1993 but a small portion was maintained intact and opened as a “historic vestige.”

Originally constructed by the French for the incarceration of Vietnamese dissidents, it was a place of extreme torture and abuse under their regime. In 1954, under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, it functioned as a state prison and beginning in 1964 it was also used for the internment of captured American pilots. Its most famous prisoner was presidential candidate John McCain.

Self-guided tours cover nineteen areas including cells, interrogation rooms, bathrooms and an authentic guillotine. Many of the rooms are populated with replicas of prisoners recreating conditions in the prison and adding an aura of realism. The “Detained American Pilots Exhibition Room” exhibits personal possessions belonging to the downed pilots. The highlight of these displays is McCain’s flight suit. The Memorial Courtyard, near the end of the tour, showcases a sculpted mural dedicated to the Vietnamese patriots who were imprisoned here.

Approximately 30-miles north of Saigon visitors can access the Cu Chi Tunnel System and the Liberated Area of Cu Chi. The 125-mile, four-layer tunnel was begun by the Viet Minh and the villagers in 1940. They secretly dug at night and hid the displaced dirt in the rice paddies. In 1959 the Viet Cong entered the area and expanded them.
The top has been removed, steps have been added and the tunnel has been enlarged in the areas open to visitors. Several rooms recreate the underground activities and local, surviving, Viet Cong soldiers lead the tours.

The first stop is a former meeting room in which a grainy orientation film is aired. The film is, as it should be, told from the point of view of the Viet Cong.  Tourists are invited to climb into a (non-enlarged) tunnel entrance and later to walk a short distance through the system. Other accessible rooms are a shoemaker, hospital, kitchen, uniform maker and sleeping quarters and demonstrations are given of the various types of traps constructed by the soldiers. The walking tour concludes with at a typical encampment and a traditional  “snack” of pineapple tea and casaba melon.

Visitors can buy items in the gift shop, eat in the café or purchase bullets and test their skills by shooting an AK47.

More than fifty percent of the population of Vietnam was not born during the conflict but the legacy lingers and there are valuable lessons to be learned by revisiting that legacy. Lives were lost and we are left with monuments and memories on both sides of the world.

Vietnam is filled with unique history and culture and currently is an outstanding travel bargain. The flight is long but on the upside it is historic, lovely, exotic and unlike any other destination.

Reprinted from 2015