War From the Other Side - Vietnam

As I posted earlier from Japan, seeing a counties war sites and museums is certainly a interesting experience when your country was the adversary. However, the surreal level really cranks up when the war in question is viewed by the other country as their glorious and successful revolution, rather then a unfortunate mistake in the past. We went to three major war sites in the Saigon area:

Reunification Palace - Saigon

This building in Saigon was the seat of the South Vietnamese government and was where the North's victory was made official in 1975. The war ended when North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates and then troops demanded the surrender of the president of South Vietnam. Interestingly, the president was not Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the leader for most of the war, but Dương Văn Minh, a poor sap who was handed power 48 hours before the tanks rolled through the gate.

The building is a piece of 60's architecture that would look at home on most US college campuses. It would be the semi-modern building that would look out of place and everyone would hate. It is only as old as 1966 because the original was bombed by the South Vietnamese (you read this correctly) Air Force in an assassination attempt of the unpopular president, Diem.

From an architectural standpoint is does improve once inside, where there are large open foyers that actually give the building a very open feel. The stuff on the main floors is mainly the official presidential offices and meeting rooms for foreign dignitaries. The main thing that struck me about this area is the chincyness of the whole place. It is trying to be fancy in a Chinatown restaurant kind of way and does not look like a place of any real power or history. Disturbingly it pretty much looks like the seat of a low budget government, which is pretty much what it was.

In the upper floors of the building is the presidents residence, which is quite modest with the exception of a collection of stuffed elephant's feet. Also on the top levels is a small movie theater with vintage projection equipment and a helipad with a vintage US huey parked on it. There is also a lounge and game room that Austin Powers would be happy to have in his flat, for the use of top government officials.

Next you go to the basement where the command bunker facilities are. It is a really dank and almost claustrophobic place. There are seemingly endless rooms, all with gray painted concrete walls, that have crappy institutional desks and chairs, as well as vintage US radio equipment. You definitely get the feeling of how maddening it must be to command a country from such a dark and cut-off place.

For the last bit of the tour they drop you off at an area where they play a government produced video of the history of the building. The narrator was really hard to understand and we walked in at the end, so we only stayed for a few minutes. The only memorable part was the song they played during the video montage at the end. It had marching band type music as a background and then a choir singing "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh..." over and over and over again.

War Reminence Museum - Saigon

This is the museum set up for the Vietnam War and the conflicts of that era. Evidently is used to be called "Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes", but was renamed to something a little more subtle when Vietnam reopened to the west.

The museum is three smallish halls surrounding a courtyard filled with captured American tanks, artillery and planes. The first hall was actually a very nice photo exhibit dedicated to news photographers who died in the war. It was actually sponsored by a bunch of western companies, I believe FedEx was one of them. This had a lot of great pictures from the photographers, most of which were published in magazines at the time, and often pictures of the photographers themselves before they died. The photos that I found most affecting were of a female war photographer who's name I cannot find. They had many of her photos as well as one of her in cammo garb. They also had a photo taken by another photographer of her being read the last rights as she lay dieing in a field of tall grass.

The second hall was mostly photos of terrible stuff that was done by the US in the war. Topics covered included My Lai, Agent Orange and the massacare that was admitted to by Bob Kerry in 2001, which I had actually never heard about. Of these the Agent Orange photos were quite disturbing, as well as a very grisly one I had never seen before of a Marine holding up the head and shoulders of a exploded corpse.

The third hall focused on the cruelty of the South Vietnamese regime as well as the French. For the South Vietnamese they had a waterboarding type of device as well as mock ups of the little cages that they used to keep political prisoners in on a deserted island. For the French they had one of their old Guillotines. It makes you jump about three feet back when you look though the little slit into the dark cage and find out there is a wax figure of a prisoner looking back at you. They should really put up a sign about that.

Chu Chi Tunnels - Chu Chi

There are several networks of tunnels that were built by the VC during the war, these are the most visited because they are right outside Saigon and have been set up into kind of a campy war tourist attraction.

Evidently this village of Chu Chi was a hotspot for the VC and war right near a big US military base. The VC in the area fought with the US for the length of the war by using a massive network of tunnels, a few of which have been enlarged for the viewing of tourists.

After buying your ticket, the first thing you do is go in a room where they show a propaganda video that was actually produced by the North Vietnamese during the war. It follows, in its own way, the story of the "Chu Chi Guerrillas". The movie starts with showing the peace loving villagers of Chu Chi tending to orchards and rice patties. Then the US starts bombing the village and kills many innocent people. The ingenious and determined Chu Chi Guerrillas then fight back the US with their network of tunnels, as well as hiding anti-tank mines in rice baskets and other guerrilla war tactics.

The strangest thing is the part where they follow one male and one female (who is quite attractive and made-up for a guerrilla fighter) member of the Chu Chi Guerrillas. They both win the "Killing Many Americans Award" (exact quote) for their mine planting and sniping abilities. I do not know if it is mainly just an issue with the translation of if that is actually the name of their medal of honor. Needless to say, I have never heard of a WWII medal called the "Killing Many Japanese Award".

After the video you get a free tour guide and they take you into the park. The first thing is an old entrance to a tunnel that is just a tiny hole in the ground. If you are skinny enough you can slide down into the hole, but not into the tunnel that leads away from it, and get your picture taken half in the ground. After that there are some bomb craters, a burned out US tank and many surface level bunkers with exhibits of how they were used to make weapons, treat the wounded or cook food. The kitchen is kind of neat because they have an underground chimney that lets the smoke out 20m away from the bunker. There is also a workshop where they make sandals out of old tires that were supposedly used by the VC in the war and were supposedly invented by Ho Chi Minh.

We declined the offer to go to the firing range where you can shoot an M-16 or AK-47 for one US dollar a bullet.

Our tour guide was a really nice and funny guy, but his habit of referring to US soldiers as "your army" made everything sound even more disturbing. When you are in the area where they have models of various sharpened bamboo traps he demonstrates each one by saying "your soldier step here then... whap!".

As for the tunnels themselves, you can walk about 200m through a tunnel that is only barely big enough to allow you to walk through bent over rather then on your hands and knees. There was a little bomb shelter room in the middle, but mostly it was just a tunnel. The air is really hot and stuffy and since only the guide has a flashlight, the person at the back walks mostly in the dark. It is a short experience, but the fact that people spent years living in this underground environment gives you an idea of how determined the VC was to win. The fact that after 5-10 minutes in there I was drenched in sweat also makes you appreciate how tough they were.

Conclusion

Let me start by saying that I in no way think that the Vietnam war sights are presented in any balanced way. The point of these places is to celebrate the glory of the current regime and they certainly in no way say anything about the ruthless tactics of the VC and NVA. However, the effect of these types of places, at least to me, is to emphasize how terrible war is, regardless of who is right and who is wrong.

It is also a little disappointing how few Americans are exposed to pictures of mangled corpses and deformed children that are the result of modern war. There is such an effort in our country, in newspapers, museums and on TV to shield us from any objects or images that disturb the myth of the glory of war. I would love to see someone build a place like this in DC. I don't think the effect of more exposure on people would be to make them never want to fight when it is necessary, but it may temper the belligerence that exists around how we need to bomb this country or that. It may also give people an idea of what it means to "Take the Gloves Off", which is too often floated as a solution when wars are not going well.

On a side note, as Japan made me want to do some more research into the endgame of WWII, Vietnam made me want to look more into the use of Agent Orange. I would be interested to know how the people who approved the use of a powerful chemical that killed all vegetation, and had effects on humans that were not fully understood at the time, would not be classified as war criminals under most accepted definitions. On one level it seems rather obvious that such a powerful chemical would have some adverse effects on humans. On another level, going on a focused campaign to destroy the natural environment of a country is not very ethical either. If we had sprayed Vietnam with a chemical that was designed to bring about chronic illness and birth defects that would be a war crime, correct? Ignorance of these obvious side effects does not seem to be a very compelling defence.