Vietnam marks 50 years since fall of Saigon, but American corporations overshadow communism today

At Hoàn Kiếm Lake, Hanoi

Vietnam recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and I visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to see the country today.

(All contemporary photos by RJ Peltz-Steele, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, with no claim to underlying works.) 

Known in Vietnam as "the civil war" or "the American war," the Vietnam War was a hot chapter in the Cold War story, as the United States sought to counter expansion of communism in Indochina.

The war was barbaric on the ground and devastating to life and land. Estimates range from one to three million civilian and military lives lost in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. More than 58,000 U.S. service members were killed. Land and wildlife were laid waste by lethal chemical defoliants, Agent Orange just one among them, inducing waves of cancer and birth defects. 

In the United States, veteran healthcare was overwhelmed by what would later be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, the social turmoil of war protest shaped a generation of counterculture so powerful that it went mainstream, transforming law and society—even working as impetus in the development of modern First Amendment and transparency doctrine.

(For an anecdote from "the Hanoi Hilton" prison, see Analog propaganda proves persuasive to some at 'Hanoi Hilton,' where exhibits selectively whitewash war, The Savory Tort, July 30, 2025.)

Shipmate, the magazine of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association, recently has published a series on the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, "Legacy of Valor." The latest issue, July/August 2025, contains the fourth entry in the series and features USNA alumni stories.

The May/June 2025 Shipmate, which featured Marines' stories, also highlighted Vietnam War exhibits in the National Medal of Honor Museum (MOHM), which opened in Arlington, Texas, just in March. I was struck by similarities between MOHM—in the narrative and pictures, at least; I have not visited yet—and the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, where I visited in June. MOHM's largest artifact is a restored Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter donated by a veteran pilot; there's an American UH-1 Huey at the museum in Vietnam, too (with me below).

(Inset: Cover of Shipmate, March/April 2025, credited to Capt. Tom Murphy, USNA '66, USN (Ret.), depicting Murphy, at left, with his SEAL team in Vietnam in 1969. "Murphy was awarded a Silver Star for his actions that helped eliminate a heavily fortified Viet Cong camp on 2 March 1969," the magazine added.)

An American Huey UH-1H at the War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, Hanoi

Saliently, the superpower United States lost the war, beating a humiliating retreat from the southern capital, Saigon. Vietnamese forces trumpeted the persevering efficacy of ruthless guerilla warfare. The sweep of communism crushed western collaborators and the remaining resistance and sparked a humanitarian crisis as refugees escaped to the sea.

Yet to walk the streets of Vietnam's major cities today, one could be forgiven for confusion over which side in fact won the war.

Ho Chi Minh City

The fall of Saigon—today, Ho Chi Minh City, though "Saigon" is still widely used, at least to refer to the touristic center, and "SGN" is the IATA code of the international airport—is celebrated on April 30. The contiguity of international labor day on May 1 makes for a holiday break.

This year, innumerable banners, signs, and monuments lined streets throughout the country to celebrate the 50th anniversary. I wonder at the cost. The posters bore patriotic illustrations that would be at home in a historical compilation of 20th-century Cold War propaganda.

Yet the banners stand juxtaposed against a background of signs demonstrating the market dominance of western corporations, namely the likes of Coca-Cola, KFC, and ubiquitous 7-Elevens. 

A local guide who took me to the Cu Chi tunnels, from where Viet Cong guerilla fighters waged brutal resistance against American forces from underneath a great swath of the country, told me how his family lost their home and modest wealth and fled Saigon when all property was nationalized after the communists took over the south.

Communism never delivered on its promises, he said. When his father returned to the family home, he found it occupied by party apparatchiks, hardly "the people." Still today, he said, despite commercial development, Vietnamese people suffer poverty, grade-school-limited public education, and no universal healthcare. That's not much to show for a communist people's victory.

"We hate Americans," he joked, smiling. He explained that the regime, apropos of the classic propaganda-poster style of the 50th anniversary images, still teaches schoolchildren to hate America. But people know better and have "moved on," he said. "Now we drink Starbucks."

It occurred to me, insofar as corporatocracy is the measure of the day, it's maybe truly representative democracy that lost the war, both in Vietnam and in America. 

Lunar-new-year commemorative beer from Budweiser, for sale at shop, Mỹ Tho

Roadside signs, Ho Chi Minh City

Billboards, Ho Chi Minh City

Exhibit at War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City

Marker at Hoàn Kiếm Lake, Hanoi

Exhibit at Thăng Long Imperial Citadel, Hanoi

 

Marker in traffic circle, Hanoi

Analog propaganda proves persuasive to some at 'Hanoi Hilton,' where exhibits selectively whitewash war

Hỏa Lò Prison, Hanoi
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Media illiteracy is not just an affliction of the aged.

In June, I visited Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as "the Hanoi Hilton," in Vietnam, where captured American soldiers, including the late U.S. Senator John McCain in 1967, were imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

Hỏa Lò was a prison well before the Vietnam War. The prison museum today mostly memorializes the brutal torture and execution of political prisoners at the hands of French colonial forces since the prison's 1896 construction.

Guillotine used by the French
in colonial Vietnam,
now at Hỏa Lò Prison
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The museum exhibits largely whitewash the imprisonment of Americans during the Vietnam War. Exhibits skip over the interrogation and torture of American prisoners, which conditions they were forced to deny in statements in the 1960s, but later reported (U.S. Navy, CBS News). Under international pressure, the Viet Cong improved conditions in the prison late in 1969. The museum focuses on that time and a prisoner exchange in 1973, in which McCain went home after more than five years.

Following the timeline of the prison's history through the many exhibit rooms, I came upon a group of British tourists, circa 20 years old. They were looking at an image of American soldiers playing volleyball in the prison yard. The photograph is a rather well known piece of propaganda, but it's represented in the museum as just a day in the life of "the American pilots" held at the prison.

One young woman in the group turned to her cohort. "See?" she said. "After the French treated them so horribly, this is how well they treated the Americans."

I guess history is written by the victors. 

Sometimes I lament that persons of my parents' generation, reared on Walter Cronkite, too readily believe anything they hear from a purported "news" anchor on cable TV or the internet. I wonder whether a screen-reared generation is too ready to believe anything they see on a museum wall.

I'll have a longer photo-essay on Vietnam, and the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, here at The Savory Tort on Friday, August 1.