Ho Chih Minh City - War Museum

Kannan with the Chinook Helicopter 

          During my last visit to Ho Chi Minh city (2011 I believe), my colleague N. Kannan and I visited the War Museum in District 1. It frankly opened my eyes about the Vietnam war, the atrocities which the US occupying forces did to firstly contain and hopefully defeat the Communist Party Viet Cong. As history as proven, the US lost the war and pulled out in 1976 when Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam (now called Ho Chi Minh city) fell to the North Vietnamese.  

          With the collapse of the South Vietnam army after the US pullout, the country unified itself under Communist rule and now, some 40 years down the road, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Coupled with a young population, it has excellent potential for manufacturing, tourism and a seaport (Da Nang) to lead its development. 

         The War Museum presents history from the Vietnamese eyes, it presents the US as the oppressor who used all their superior weaponry, firepower, military aircraft and shamefully, chemical weapons (who can forget the carpet bombing of the jungles with Agent Orange) to try to  defeat the morale, the numbers and will of the North Vietnamese. In the end it was the North Vietnamese Communists who WON the war through sheer tenacity, strategy and collective will. 

        Countless films have been made to soothe and befuddle the rest of the world, Platoon, Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now,Hamburger Hill and the incredibly inane Rambo series pandering to the intellectually comatose and ignorant audiences. The fact that US lost and pulled out, and here are propoganda films starring a bulging Sylvester killing hundreds of soliders is indeed laughable and in a sense, embarrassing.   

           2 memories stick out till today. There was this instrument of torture I will never forget. In the Hanoi 'Hilton' (or the prisoner of war camp) there was a 'cage' made of barbed wire and the prisoner of war (Viet Cong) who was captured would be thrown into that cage and be impaled and cut by the every piece of rusty spikes in it. He would be there until he gave some 'information'. How inhumane was that ?  

         There was another propoganda film made by the Vietnamese, it showed how a brave 16 year old girl had single-handedly blown up 2 tanks by crawling near to them and firing bazookas point blank.

        When you 'see' the war from the 'other side' finally you get the true picture of how it was, from a independent viewpoint.