Allen Myers, Ho Chi Minh City
April 30 will be the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the liberation of southern Vietnam from foreign occupation and domination. As part of the preparations for celebrating the anniversary, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee — the city's government — organised a six-day program for foreign and local journalists.
Representatives of 70 media organisations in 21 countries participated in the tour. Helen Jarvis and I represented Green Left Weekly.
The program combined the history of that time with opportunities to examine how Vietnam has changed in the subsequent 30 years.
Final offensive
The first morning was a press conference at the city branch headquarters of the Association of Vietnamese Veterans. Participants were officers from the period of the war, including Major General Hoang Dung and Nguyen Thanh Trung.
Hoang Dung was assistant to the commander in chief of the final liberation campaign. Trung is famous as a patriot who was sent to infiltrate the Saigon regime's air force as a pilot. As the liberation forces converged on Saigon, on the morning of April 8, 1975, Trung dropped two bombs on the presidential palace and then escaped with his plane to liberated territory.
Dung presented a fascinating inside account of the offensive that brought down the old regime and reunited the country. After the 1973 Paris agreement, he said, the regime of Nguyen Van Thieu violated the agreement by going on an offensive against liberated areas of the south.
Leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party met in October 1973 to assess the situation. They decided to prepare a major offensive that would begin in 1975; if successful, this would create the situation for an attack on Saigon beginning in 1976.
The plan of course included options in case of the offensive proceeding better — or worse — than expected. In fact, the campaign succeeded far more quickly than anyone had imagined. When Hue and Da Nang were liberated before the end of March, the commanders decided on March 31 to seize the opportunity and attempt to liberate Saigon before the beginning of the rainy season (roughly mid-to-late May).
From Hanoi, the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap sent the commanders encouragement: "Faster, much faster; daring, more daring; utmost determination to win."
The old regime had eight infantry divisions within Saigon and another five divisions on the outskirts, plus numerous police forces and an air force. A major reason for haste on the part of the liberation forces was the desire to avoid a set piece battle that would damage much of Saigon and its population of 3 million.
The Ho Chi Minh Campaign began at 5pm on April 26, by which time eight commando regiments had been infiltrated into Saigon. Militias based within the city also aided the advance.
From the early morning of April 30, thousands of welcoming civilians led the liberation forces into the city. By that point, Thieu had fled, being replaced by General Duong Van Minh. Minh prepared to surrender unconditionally, despite attempts by the French ambassador to talk him out of it.
Shortly after 10 am, the first tank of the liberation forces arrived at the palace. It broke through a narrow gate to one side of the main entrance, but became stuck between the stone gate posts. A few minutes later, a second tank knocked down the main gate. Colonel Bui Van Tung, the political commissar of Tank Brigade 203, entered the palace and accepted Minh's unconditional surrender. The war was over.
The other side
The journalists were also able to meet with four individuals from the former regime — three generals and a civilian.
Former Major General Nguyen Huu Co was the only one of the four who had been held in re-education camps after 1975. He said he could understand why he had been held, but clearly thought the length of his confinement — 12 years — was excessive.
Co, who was held with about 25 other Saigon generals, said that the first two years had been hard. Their food consisted mostly of rice and vegetables, with not much meat. They worked eight hours a day on tasks such as cultivating vegetables or cutting firewood. After two years, they were shifted to a camp where their families could visit them and bring them food, medicine and money.
Co seemed bitter not so much towards the government as towards Nguyen Van Thieu and his faction of the Saigon army. (Co belonged to the opposing faction of Duong Van Minh.) He said that he had wanted to leave Vietnam in early 1975 but had not been able to do so. Thieu's faction talked loudly about how they would "stay and serve the country" no matter what, but then fled. "They had the means to get out, but I didn't."
Today four of Co's 12 children live in the US, and he visits them every year.
Former Brigadier Nguyen Huu Hanh was retired from the army in May 1974 by Thieu as part of the infighting between the latter and Minh. He returned with Minh on April 29 and was with Minh in the palace when he surrendered the next day.
On the historic day, he said, the People's Liberation Army commander told Minh that there were no winners or losers, but now only Vietnamese. Hanh described Minh as a "patriot" who had accepted his brief presidency only in order to end the war and contribute to national reconciliation.
Asked about changes since 1975, Hanh said he is made "proud" by some of the economic changes. "The Vietnamese economy is now more self-sufficient. Farmers in the south are able to grow rice and export. In the past, the economy of the south fully depended on the US."
Nguyen Dinh Dau, the only civilian of the four, was part of a so-called "third force" that tried to become a political power after the Paris peace agreement of 1973, projecting itself as a peaceful alternative to both sides in the civil war.
"I was not a communist", Dau said, "but I wanted to help end the war". He added, somewhat wistfully, I thought, "I was not part of the [Saigon] government or part of the revolution. After 1975, nobody paid any attention to the third force."
Dau, who is now 85, said he still writes a weekly article for a Catholic newspaper, conducts historical research and publishes one book a year.
Brigadier Trieu Quoc Manh was a judge for the Saigon regime in the 1960s and the police chief of Saigon-Gia Dinh from 1971 to 1975. While he had not been sent to a re-education camp, for several years after reunification he was required to attend an annual three-day training session in Hanoi.
A number of journalists asked what conclusions the four had drawn from their experiences. Most of the replies to this were not very forthcoming, except for Nguyen Huu Hanh's.
In 1962, he said, he had been in the United States and had learned then that "every nation has its own way of doing things".
The present US administration, he added, should review the history of the Vietnam War and learn from it. "A strong country can't always act against a small country just as it wishes."
As a superpower, the US should seek to improve relations among countries big and small. "I think the US should try to solve problems through peaceful international solutions."
From Green Left Weekly, April 6, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.