Sam Lee, my guide, explains to me the war museums in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMS) have ‘softened’ their anti-American rhetoric to win back favour with the USA to encourage trade and investment. Much of the photos and displays have been removed. With this in mind I visited the War Remnants Museum.
Wow! If the information here has been ‘softened’ I would hate to see the full Vietnamese version of events. It was overwhelming. Any big wars come at great human and material cost but the legacy of this conflict continues to be felt today. The indiscriminate nature of the American effort is many fold and hard to comprehend. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam and Laos by the USA in 14 months than their entire effort in WW2. But so many of these bombs remain active to this day and still claiming lives. And the toxic dioxin chemicals poured over the rain forests and productive farm lands to remove the protective cover of Viet Cong supply lines and food production, also contaminated 4 million Vietnamese according to the statistics. Many unknowing American soldiers were also poisoned. The legacy of this action is also still being felt. The genotoxic nature of these chemicals is on display through many photos of horribly deformed human lives. Three generations have been scarred.
The on-going legacies of the unexplored bombs still littering the landscape and the long-term effects of the dioxin chemicals make this the dirtiest war of all to my mind.
The day started with a visit to the busy Saigon River, then an elevator ride to the lookout in the tallest skyscraper in town. The Bitexto Financial Tower is new and big but is also testament to HCMC’s, and Vietnam’s advance to the modern world. It symbolises economic success, as do the many up-market shopping centers that splatter central HCMC.
The crassness of Christmas is alive and well in HCMC.
angusmccoll 