War Remnants
The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh shows all parts of the war. The few good people and all the worst aspects.
I knew the war was god awful and stupid, but I didn't feel the deplorable nature of it all. And it seems so obvious, how has so much of it never fully registered before? So many US monsters, truly evil, vile beings that tortured and killed for no reason, much like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. At least some in Vietnam tried to do the right thing, and so many others fought against the senseless killing.
And so many photographers from both sides were killed. Glad that their photos were published postmortem. Luckily, Nick Ut, the photographer of the “Napalm Girl”, children running down the street after being hit, is still alive and was able to tell his story. This photo reached the world and sparked outrage, at least part of what led to the worldwide protests that the museum was enthusiastically including in a large connecting hall.
Protests against American interference were held around the world, condemning everything that was happening and telling the US government to pull out its soldiers. The rest of those in the U.S, in our worst, a whole lot about just all of the protests that were going on around them at that time, which we know there were so many. Had a giant hallway of protest from different countries in the world telling the US to stop, to leave Vietnam to its own country. They already won their independence from the French, and they had an election or a planned election to find out if they were going to be communist or Democratic or rather capitalist. But that never ended up happening, and the war actually started.
The most horrible phase was from an American soldier who said, “If it's dead, it's Viet Cong.”
Everyone was the enemy, so they killed men, women, and children, regardless of where they were actually from or who they were as people.
While the museum could have easily demonised the US in full, the room full of heroes of Vietnam, war, Americans who received the Vietnamese citizens from bombings from Irish and also included the helicopter pilots who saved the Vietnamese from the village from villages and also protesters. Inside that room they also showed a lot of American protests and specifically protesters that got arrested for going against the US government they talked about the people who decided to skip the war all together that's ran away to Canada and other countries so they wouldn't have to serve and they talked about how Brave they were. I always admired the people who went against the government and decided not to fight or be conscientious objectors, although I wish that people weren't drafted, but then they might not get anyone to fight. Some people wanted to be there, but I think the majority did not.
They also had the pins that were made as part of protesting or showing your support for those groups that went against the US government's decision for war, and it talked about the people who got arrested because of protesting, like Abbie Hoffman (part of the Chicago Seven arrested for inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention), and Tom Hurwitz (arrested at Columbia University for protesting the university's involvement in the war), and more in larger crowds. While it seems that protesting can't do anything a lot of the time, especially in times like, well, like this. It seems that way for all time, but even though it did take a few years, support grew, and the fighting back worked. So I can only hope that if we continue protesting now, it can make a difference, although that still means we need a government that listens to the people. On a protest wall there were a bunch of buttons hung up that supported the efforts. The one with the yellow submarine made me think of the Beatles song “Yellow Submarine” in a whole new way. I wonder which came first.
They also had an information section on the Winter Soilder Investigation, which I only knew as Bucky Barns from Captian America, but it’s no surprise that the comic book writers took inspiration from the terrible things that happened in real life to create a huge bad guy twist for a fallen hero, even though the Winter Soilder story arc came out in 2005-2006. It was a media event that was sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from January 31, 1971, to February 2, 1971. It’s intent was to publicise war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War by gathering 109 veterans and 16 civilians in Detroit, Michigan with discharged servicemen from each branch of the armed forces, civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics all giving testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years 1963–1970. With this the VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam.
There was a young girl with a father or grandpa behind me. I wonder how much she is seeing, if she understands any of this yet.
And seeing all the deformities and illnesses caused by Agent Orange/dioxin. I caught myself thinking, these people are grotesque, which is an awful thing to think, but humans shouldn't look like that. These are disturbing, but not even in focusing on the way they look, but because other PEOPLE did this TO them. These aren't just random genetic mutation issues, but diseases caused by the US's stupidity and evil actions. People are still being born with genetic abnormalities in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the United States. Anyone who came into contact with the poison was irreparably harmed for their lives and their offspring to come.
Walking around outside, they had a lot of tanks, helicopters, a boat, and more large artillery that the US used and left.
They also had a section about the torture that went on, especially from the French from before the war started with the tiger cages that were extremely small, along with a guillotine, which they talked about the treatment of the people that were captured by the North, and they said that they were treated pretty well. however from what I had heard from people who lived through that you know when documentaries that they were glad to get the hell out of there that they were tortured and treated appallingly I don't think that the West would have done much better but I doubt that anyone was worse and it was very one-sided for sure in the museum they made it sound like they treated their prisoners well and that one guy didn't want to leave that he was happier in the prison although maybe he was just happier in the prison because he didn't have to kill people I don't know.
I do wonder how much they don't show, not about the war, but the aftermath, and before. Why did one side refuse to be communist? Was it just against French and American colonialism? Or were there more serious issues not reported by the current government, like in Cambodia?
What I didn't realise until I got to Hanoi was the name of Ho Chi Minh, the city. I knew it changed from Saigon after the war, but I didn't know what Ho Chi Minh meant. I was just thinking to myself, huh, I wonder what this means, but when we went to Hanoi and went to the Presidential Palace, it clicked in my mind that, oh, Ho Chi Minh was the president, he named it after himself after he conquered it.
Work Cited
Olson, James. 1988. Dictionary of the Vietnam War. Peter Bedrick Books. 489
Stacewicz, Richard. 1997. Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Twayne Publishers. 234
Day Two testimony, POW Panel Transcript and Panel Members, The Sixties Project Archived 2007-12-13 at the Wayback Machine
War Remnants Museum. Visited 4 March 2025.
