Vietnam Commemorates Fall of Saigon

Amid memories of triumph for some and pain for others, Vietnam marked the 25th anniversary of Saigon’s fall to Communist troops with a national holiday today, extolling the virtues of patriotism and calling for a renewed spirit of self-sacrifice.

“It was the happiest moment in my revolutionary life,” Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, 87, Hanoi’s former military commander, said recently of the U.S.-backed Saigon regime’s surrender on April 30, 1975. “It was the total and comprehensive victory of Vietnam over the United States--the victory of 100 years struggling against Western colonialists.”

Not surprisingly, U.S. diplomats steered clear of the Liberation Day festivities. The American ambassador, former POW Douglas “Pete” Peterson, was in the United States on official business. The press officer at the U.S. Consulate here was out of the country on leave, and the consul general, Charles Ray, a two-tour Vietnam War veteran, said he could not attend the official ceremonies because of their early starting time at 6:30 a.m.

But for old-guard Communists of Giap’s generation, this was a day to be celebrated. And to highlight “the lenient policy being pursued by the Communist Party,” the state announced that it was freeing 12,205 prisoners, the nation’s largest amnesty. Twenty-nine of the prisoners were foreigners, including four unidentified Americans.

In Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon is now known, bunting decorated the tree-lined boulevards, and municipal buildings sported fresh coats of paint. Even the harshest critics had to admit that this fabled metropolis--captured by the French in 1859 and overrun by Americans in 1965--has reclaimed the glow and charm of a bygone era and is abuzz with commercial inspiration and the entrepreneurial spirit of a new generation.

Though Liberation Day, commemorating a war fought by now-old men, does not much resonate with Vietnam’s youth, Le Duan Boulevard was lined by dawn with a few hundred spectators who applauded respectfully as soldiers, veterans, and youth and civic groups marched past.

The parade route was only five blocks long, and the event itself was devoid of any spontaneity. One government worker, asked her opinion of the celebration, said, “I’ll have to check with my department head.”

Only those with special passes were allowed on the parade route or onto grounds of the old Presidential Palace where Giap, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, Communist Party chief Le Kha Phieu and other national leaders sat to hear speeches on what one official called “the great epic of Vietnamese heroism.”

“Our biggest relief 25 years ago was that the war was over,” Chinh Trinh, 58, a former high school principal, said by telephone from his home in Melbourne, Australia. “Hanoi announced there would be forgiveness. We were brothers. We had a very positive feeling rather than a negative one that day. But as time went by, everything went vice versa.”

Indeed, the government in Hanoi allowed the opportunity for true reconciliation to slip by. Unlike the U.S. Civil War--which ended at Appomattox with Grant letting Lee’s soldiers keep their horses and sidearms and return home to plant their crops--Vietnam’s internal conflict concluded with Hanoi seeking retribution and control. The Viet Cong--the southern fighters allied with the north--were pushed aside, the defeated southerners were punished, and northerners came south to take the reins of power.

About 400,000 men like Trinh were sent off to reeducation camps. More than a million were moved into economic zones so unproductive that the newly reunified country edged to the brink of famine. As economic and political conditions worsened, nearly a million southerners--including many of the nation’s best-educated and brightest people--fled on foot and by boat. One of them was Trinh, who escaped on his seventh try.

“A lot of people, including my dad, wanted to stay in Vietnam and help rebuild the country, but it was impossible if you’d supported the wrong side,” said Trinh’s son, Hoi, 29, who was named Young Vietnamese-Australian of the Year in 1999 and will be a flag bearer at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia, in September.

Still, differences between north and south have narrowed over the years, and even those who consider communism irrelevant or an obstacle to development have come to accept the course of history. And undeniably, life for the 77 million Vietnamese, particularly those in urban areas, has improved dramatically since the government started moving cautiously in 1989 toward a free-market economy.

According to an ACNielsen survey late last year of Vietnam’s six major cities, 95% of households had a color TV, 54% a refrigerator, 42% a motorbike and 34% a telephone. Less than 20 years earlier, only senior Communist Party officials were permitted to have a residential phone, virtually all private transportation was by bicycle, and most homes did not have electricity, let alone a refrigerator.

But ACNielsen also asked respondents, “How happy are you with your current state of life?” And while 18% answered that they were very or quite happy, and 32% felt very or quite unhappy, 50% said they were neither happy nor unhappy.

That may be because, despite rising living standards, there are few countries where the gap between performance and potential seems so great. Vietnam remains one of the world’s poorest nations, with a per capita income of about $350 and a plethora of inefficient, incompetently managed state enterprises. At the same time, it has a population that is literate, industrious, capitalistic in spirit and obsessed with education.

National economic growth has been cut by about half from the 9% annual increases in the mid-1990s, and foreign investment fell from $2 billion in 1996 to $600 million last year--a drop that investors attribute to the government’s sluggish moves toward political and economic reform. The government replies that it alone will decide the pace of reform and that it gives top priority to political and civil stability, which rapid economic growth could upset.

“I came away from meetings with government officials thinking this is still basically a Communist country with a lot of distrust for us,” said Jules Bonavolonta, vice chairman of Delaware-based MBNA America Bank and a war veteran who toured Vietnam last week with 23 other influential businesspeople in a delegation representing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. The group’s purpose was to scout investment opportunities and ways to assist Vietnam’s development.

“But on the other hand,” he added, “you have to compare that impression with what you see in the postwar generation here. The young kids we met are hungry for information, for education, for a chance to get ahead. You can see it in their eyes. That’s the real dichotomy of Vietnam.”