Visiting The War Remnants Museum in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This was getting unwieldy so I decided to move it from what I hoped would be the first part of my series on my trip to Saigon, Vietnam in 2024. Here you go!

During my trip to Vietnam, I walked through the rain to reach the War Remnants Museum on the Vietnam War (or The Resistance War Against America). Here’s how it went.

Eventually I made it and paid the VND40,000 to get in where I was met with a lot of abandoned American military equipment like planes and tanks.

I’ve got to say, the exhibits here can be incredibly horrific. You start an exhibit on the prison system during the war and the prisoners went through immense torture and starvation. They also showed a pit where the guards looked down on the prisoners and tossed lime.

From there you go inside where you get a look at the First Indochina War and the thing that stood out to me was how they used bikes to get around.

After that, I made my way upstairs where all the horrific stuff is shown. Here you’ll see a lot of pictures of the brutality the Americans inflicted on the Vietnamese that leaves little to the imagination. It’s the first war in an age of mass media and photojournalism so there’s plenty to go around.

A lot of the pictures don’t have much narration to them so they can lack context, like the infamous Saigon Execution that I can’t post because it’s under copyright, but can link to on Wikipedia which features a video of the execution. It’s considered a catalyst for the anti-war movement, but some revisionism argues that the guy being executed killed the executioner’s friends and family so had it coming. I’ve spent more time than I should investigating this since the Wiki article says the revision is doubtful, but I want to finish this post before the year ends so let’s continue on.

The other interesting part was showcasing all the weapons used which they did with a quote I forgot on how the war was an opportunity to test out its fancy weapons. There were also a bunch of quotes by Congressmen talking about how subhuman the Vietnamese were. Sick shit compounded by the picture of Napalm Girl which I can include but won’t since it’s too grousome.

Next was the exhibit on Agent Orange and how it caused immense harm to the Vietnamese people. Agent Orange is a defoliant and the US had hoped that it would destroy the dense Viet jungle so the Viet Cong can’t hide (more on hiding in part 2), something that worked well for the British during the Malay Emergency, Britain’s Vietnam. This under Operation Ranch Hand with the tagline ripping off Smokey Bear saying Only you can prevent a forest. Grim. Sadly for the Americans the Vietnamese could still hide¹ but not with extreme environmental and physiological effects not just for the Vietnamese but the American troops who deployed the herbicide.

This exhibit ended with some stats showing the devastation caused by the Vietnam War which included the complete destruction of their infrastructure and all this defoliage caused by Agent Orange.

After all that I had to write Damn in the guestbook and headed down to the part where it talks about the solidarity they received from around the world as well as an appreciation from the photojournalism that probably led to the North Vietnamese winning the war.

In all, it’s a very different perspective from what you’d get given the dominance of American media. American media usually portray the war in a macho way and don’t usually show the full cost of war like the Vietnamese did.

At the same time, it can lack context. Which the Saigon Execution might not be as clear cut as the revisionists want to make it, the Northern Vietnamese were quite brutal and conducted many atrocities of their own. Also, I get that this isn’t the point but Vietnam has had to fight for half of the last century across and around the Indochina wars, namely:

1. Japan
2. France
3. America
4. Cambodia and
5. China

They’ve well earned their freedom at this point but it’s interesting how their clashes with Cambodia (who were instigating) and China don’t get much of a say.

All the same, this museum is a must visit if you go to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City.

It costs VND40,000 (~US$1.60) to visit though there are various discounts for people who meet certain criteria. It’s open every day from 7:30AM–5PM.