A Visit to the War Remnants Museum – Remnants of the War

Fifteen years ago I visited what was then called the American War Crimes Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Its name has been changed to the War Remnants Museum, reflecting improving relations between the United States and Vietnam, and the building has been expanded, but the feelings of overwhelm and sadness remain the same.

The Vietnam War defined my generation and it continues to reverberate in our psyches and in our country. Inside this non-descript three story structure filled with photos and posters and artwork and accessed through a courtyard where captured U.S. tanks and helicopters and fighter planes sit as uneasy reminders of a war that took the lives of too many Vietnamese and Americans, all of the emotions and memories come flooding back: The Vietnamese resisting a foreign army yet again, images of napalm burning the flesh of a child running naked in the middle of the road, American soldiers with little choice, struggling to protect themselves and fighting a misguided war of three Presidents – Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (and Democratic and Republican Congresses alike) and dieing on the battle field as the local news brought us daily body counts of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. There is Walter Cronkite first in a helicopter wearing a helmet and then coming out against the war. There is Johnson resigning. There are Kissinger and Nixon whose secret plans to end the war bring escalation and Christmas bombings. There is Madame Nhu and Diem and Westmoreland and General Giap and Ho Chi Minh and Tonkin Gulf and Senators-in-opposition Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse. There are the Oakland 7 and the Chicago 7 and troop trains and Canada and flagged draped coffins and draft boards and deferments. There it all is, in your head, as you walk though exhibits depicting destruction in Vietnam, opposition around the world, and art work spawned by war.

On this visit, all I can think about is the death on both sides. American and Vietnamese lives needlessly extinguished. So much has happened since: Vietnam is rebuilt, most of its people were not alive during the war, relations with the Americans have been ‘normalized’, but the war is still there. It will always be there and the War Remnants Museum it turns out is aptly named – the remnants remain.