Day 377: War Remnants Museum

The only thing I felt inclined to do today was a visit to the war remnants museum. The museum collects and exhibits all kinds of remnants from the Vietnam war. These included all kinds of weapons: guns, mines, bombs, planes, helicopters, etc. But the biggest and in my opinion most fascinating part of the exhibition was the collection of photographs.

In so many respects, the Vietnam war brought out the worst in humankind. For example, have a look at the following picture, and especially the grinning guy on the left-hand side.

Then look again - can you make out what the five military guys are doing? It may be a little hard to see, but the description below the picture makes it clear: they were waterboarding the person lying on the ground.

Another atrocity in the Vietnam war was the use of herbicides, most notably Agent Orange. Euphemistically, the US army called the operation in which wide stretches of Vietnam were sprayed with toxic chemicals 'Operation Ranch Hand' - as if the Vietnamese needed someone to help them with their agriculture, and Agent Orange was the warped American idea of farming help. The museum had several photographs of spraying equipment, canisters and planes.

They also had a few before-and-after photographs that showed the drastic effect defoliants had on the vegetation:

To this day, Agent Orange causes illnesses such as cancer, and the birth of deformed children - not only in Vietnam, but in US veterans as well.


The next photograph is a famous one shot by photographer Nick Ut, showing children running from a napalm attack.

Apart from the pictures, the museum also had several bits of information that were new to me. For example, did you know that at its peak, the US army had more than half a million soldiers in Vietnam? Or that the total weight of bombs dropped on Vietnam was almost three times as high as during the entire second world war? Another, particularly ugly bit was that of unprovoked slaughters of entire villages, including (pregnant) women and children. As if slaughtering civilians wasn't bad enough, the people who committed the murders could then go on and become US senators - one of them finally admitted to his crimes in 2001.

In 1953, way before the American involvement in the war, President Eisenhower admitted the true reason for helping the French in the Indochina war they were fighting in Vietnam at the time. Since the US became involved just about ten years later, I'm assuming that this was the real reason for the Vietnam war, too. The reason? It wasn't to keep communism in check, but rather to secure access to Vietnam's deposits of tin and tungsten...