Saigon War Museum. Documents and photos

Want to know the truth about the Vietnam War? Something that will not be told in any one and is unlikely to be written in books. Then you should definitely visit one of the most popular museums Ho Chi Minh City - Museum war casualties.

The museum is mainly dedicated to the period when the US military took part in it. It is located in the heart of the city, at 28 Vo Van Tan Street, not far from the Palace of Independence. From the Ben Tan market, it can be reached by bus.

The ticket price is fifteen thousand dong. The museum is open every day from 7:30 to 12:00 and from 13:30 to 17:00.

The museum closes at five o'clock in the evening, so I recommend purchasing tickets no later than four o'clock, otherwise you simply won't have time to see everything.

About the museum

This museum is one of the most popular attractions not only in Ho Chi Minh City, but throughout Vietnam. It is visited daily by many people from all over the world, as it is included in the list of tourist routes for all travel agencies.

The opening of the museum took place in 1975, that is, immediately after the end of the war, and initially it was called the "House for displaying US war crimes and their puppets." But then the name was changed due to the liberalization of the country and the improvement of relations with the Americans.

The exhibition is located in several buildings and is divided into 8 thematic sections. The war here is demonstrated through the eyes of the victims, which is why the exposition leaves an indelible impression on visitors and even shocks. According to many tourists, this place is not for those with weak nerves.

The exposition consists of photographs that show the impact of chemicals on the human body, archival documents, execution tools, evidence of the cruelty of opponents. The exhibits are accompanied by explanatory notes in 3 languages, including English.

Visitors can see the trophy military equipment, tiger cages, unexploded ordnance and other artifacts from that war. Perhaps the only positive thing in the exhibition are the documents that are dedicated to the anti-war movement.

What to watch

A separate pavilion was erected next to the museum building, in which there is a model of a prison where Vietnamese prisoners were kept. There you can see the instruments of execution and torture (mostly ordinary sticks, nunchucks, telephones, through which the prisoners were shocked), as well as cages and cells.

Mannequins that depict exhausted prisoners look gloomy. In one of the cells there is a figure of a prisoner made of wax, chained to a device that does not allow a person to even sleep properly.

Visitors are especially impressed by the so-called "tiger cages" measuring 2.7 x 1.5 x 3 meters. When the temperature was high, from five to fourteen people were put in such a chamber, and during the cold, a maximum of two prisoners were left there, who were chained to a metal pin.

Immediately after passing ticket office visitors enter the courtyard. There is military equipment, which was used by both warring parties. Planes, tanks, a helicopter and more are placed on a small area.

It is possible to take a photo next to the equipment, touch everything with your own hands and even climb inside. The only thing that is forbidden is climbing on artifacts.

After examining the exhibits, visitors go inside the building, which consists of several floors. The spacious halls contain many different exhibits and photographs. Behind the display cases are ammunition, cartridge cases, rifles and other weapons.

At the very beginning, tourists enter the hall, where photos of politicians are presented, as well as a description of the history of the beginning of the Vietnam War.

In other rooms, the consequences of the terrible war are shown, how it affected the lives of ordinary Vietnamese. There are photos of people who have undergone a mutation, some of them have huge noses and ears, others have no limbs, others have underdeveloped certain parts of the body. It also talks about miscarriages in pregnant women due to chemical weapons.

The last hall is dedicated to the largest ecocide in modern history. The US military actively used chemical weapon under the name "Agent Orange", resulting in the death of about sixty percent of the jungle and thirty percent of the lowland forests, and also affected a huge number of people.

In the hall there are more than a hundred photos of chemical weapons victims that were taken during the war. Also shown are photos of children born after the war, with various birth defects and defects that they developed due to the negative effects of chemicals.

In Ho Chi Minh City, known as Saigon until 1975 and the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, there is a place worth visiting for anyone interested in the history of the 20th century and the misfortunes that befell Indochina after World War II. This is the Vietnam War Museum. It is quite small and does not have a touch of attraction, like the Cu Chi tunnels, but nevertheless leaves an impression.

In the courtyard of the museum there is a simple exhibition of captured American and South Vietnamese equipment, which museum visitors love to take pictures of. By the way, there are few foreigners among them. People come to Saigon mainly on business or for one night before moving to the resort. So the visitors are mostly locals.

The exposition of the museum almost exclusively consists of photographs and stands with explanations. Here, for example, is an information table that will surprise many. Not everyone knows that not only Americans fought in Vietnam, but also contingents from five countries allied to America. True, the only ones of all of them who took a noticeable part in the war were the South Korean Expeditionary Force. In gratitude for the help in the fight against the North, the South Korean ruler Pak Chung Hee sent a 50,000-strong contingent to Vietnam - and I must say that these were the best troops that fought in that war against the Viet Cong. Their loss ratio was three times lower than that of the Americans (not to mention the South Vietnamese) and they fought competently and brutally, so that the command of the northerners avoided clashes with the Koreans.

Archival photos posted in the museum are extremely eloquent. Those who (with good reason) talk about the cruelty of the Communists should remember that in such conflicts, both sides are doing far from courtly things. Here, for example, is a typical technique for interrogating a prisoner used by South Vietnamese special forces.

One of classic photos who went around the whole world - women and children swim to escape from an American air raid

The interrogation is over. Last seconds before execution

The next photo requires explanation, given right there, at the stand. At least I understood that the photo refers specifically to this episode. Here is the translation.

"February 25, 1969 between 20 and 21 hours, a group of rangers "Navy Seals" (one of the most select groups of American special forces), led by Lieutenant Bob Kerry, entered settlement 5 of Thanh Fon village, Thanh Phu district, Ben Che province. They slit the throats Bui Van Wpat, 66, and Lou Thi Canh, 62, had their three grandchildren dragged out of their hideout, two killed and one disembowelled (sic). of persons (including three pregnant women), opened the stomach of one girl.Only 12-year-old Bui Thi Luom, who was wounded in the foot, survived.

It wasn't until 2001 that Senator Bob Kerry confessed to the international community that he had committed a crime."

I have two questions in this and other similar stories. Firstly, the pathological desire of GI to happily take pictures with their victims, either at the moment of interrogation with predilection, or before execution, or during execution, or after, when only an incomprehensible stump remains from the victim. There are a lot of similar photos in the museum. What were the characters in the pictures guided by? Did you expect to proudly show them to your grandchildren later, or what? Look, here, they say, what a strong grandfather, half-Vietnamese raises with one left. This is one side. And if you look from the other side, these shots can easily be used against heroes. And the example of the Second World War, when the Germans also liked to pose in similar situations, was then very fresh - among the fathers-commanders there were probably a lot of veterans of those years. By the way, Soviet army often accused of cruelty, but I don’t remember anything like photographic documents. Of course, poverty, censorship and commissars, however, the American army also had its own censorship, and the role of commissars should have been replaced by officers who should have explained to their subordinates that such photographs are a double-edged sword: today the nail of the GI demobilization album, and tomorrow, as it were, evidence. Maybe it's not about poverty and not about commissars, but about a category called conscience? Don't know.

Another question. Take the mentioned senator. It is unlikely that he is in the photo, and the photo itself could not have been from there, but the story is remarkable, and, by the way, completely true. For example, they tell us that we are a shameful country, because we have two people in the Duma who are accused of murders on the territory of other countries. Note, the accused, about their real guilt, even the grandmother said in two. And here the whole governor and senator, the elite of society, served his country in such an original way and does not deny it at all. Of course, the frenzy of war, this and that, but actually disemboweling minors alive, even in the Middle Ages, did not belong to the generally accepted customs of war, what can we say about the 20th century. And what about our hero, do you think? Does his conscience eat him? He himself, of course, says that he eats, but he did not return the Bronze medal received for this massacre. And no one is trying to take it away - the hero of the nation, of course. Having completed his political career, the senator-ripper calmly headed the university, and no one, presumably, blamed him for the past. In fact, these are the children of the Viet Cong, why kill yourself because of them.

There is a stand dedicated to Songmi nearby. The commander of the operation, Lieutenant Kelly, spent three days under arrest, if I'm not mistaken.

There was another stand there, which, to be honest, I didn’t raise my hand to reshoot. This is the one where the pictures of the defoliants victims. Children with unimaginable deformities. A terrible sight. Search the Internet, if anyone is curious, I would definitely not have the spirit to process these photos.

Yes, everyone has heard of the phrase "bomb in stone Age"? I think so. But not everyone knows the author. Here, I ask you to love and favor.

And further. Remember, I wrote about Tuol Sleng? For those who don't remember, follow the link to Cambodia above. It was a communist prison. But a couple of words about anti-communist prisons. According to the exposition, in 1954-1960 alone (even before the war), 800 thousand people were kept in South Vietnamese prisons, of which 80 thousand died.

The conditions there were, as it were, no worse than in Tuol Sleng. Here is a cell for female prisoners in Thu Duc prison, one of those that was called "stove" because of its size and stuffiness. The prisoners (let me remind you, women) breathed at the door in turn.

Prisoner Lam Van Wung spent 19 years in prison. Ten times he sat in the "tiger cage" (about it below). Due to the torture, his arms completely atrophied and became paralyzed.

Released prisoners paralyzed by torture and conditions

Now what is a "tiger cage". This is a special cell for prisoners whom the Saigon authorities considered recalcitrant. Size - 2.7 x 1.5 x 3 meters. In hot weather, from 5 to 14 people were stuffed into the cell, in cold weather they left one or two chained to a metal pin. They were not allowed out of the cell for any reason. Narrow passages were left for the jailers. There were any reasons for beating - talking, coughing, even a slap on the body in order to kill a mosquito. The food was a handful of rice with a couple of pieces of dried rotten fish. The water ration was half a tin can per day - this is for drinking and for personal hygiene, which brought special torment to female prisoners.

Full translation here

This is what the camera looked like

So that the death penalty through guillotining in South Vietnam was often perceived as deliverance. The guillotine, by the way, is real, while the "tiger cage" is a life-size model.

All in all, a solid museum. And instructive. And records after his visit are often left appropriate. However, this is not surprising

Warning, this post is not for the faint of heart!

It's good when the war is far away from you.
When people die and cities are destroyed somewhere far away, and all you know about it is information from news releases or morning newspapers.

America over the past 100 years has participated in more than a dozen wars, but not once has this happened on its territory. Nobody attacked her, but she interfered and interferes everywhere and everywhere - Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Germany, Japan (perhaps the only case when America was really attacked), Korea, Guatemala, Lebanon, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada , Panama, twice Iraq, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and, of course, one of the most famous wars involving the Americans - Vietnam.
One of the most famous and probably the most shameful for the United States. A war in which a superpower with vast resources, a super-equipped army and advanced military equipment could not do anything with the North Vietnamese army and powerful guerrilla resistance.
Neither the massive bombardments, nor the scorched earth tactics, nor the brutal reprisals against local residents who supported the partisans, nor the use of the infamous "Agent Orange", who made tens of thousands of people disabled and freaked out during the war and makes them so even in our time, did not help - still there are mass cases of the birth of children with very serious physical and mental disabilities.

In Ho Chi Minh, the former capital of South Vietnam, then called Saigon, is the "Museum of War Victims", which displays horrifying exhibits and hundreds of chilling photographs, including those taken by American soldiers. The museum is not for the faint of heart. A museum that shows the true face of the country - the champion of democracy and human values ​​- America. A country that time after time, regardless of human values other countries, sends his soldiers there ...

This museum impressed me no less than the huge Auschwitz, which amazes everyone's imagination.
Yes, someone will say that this museum has more photographs than machine guns and military equipment, but .... these photographs penetrate much deeper into consciousness than weapons lying under glass.
In these photographs, many of which were taken not even by war correspondents, but by soldiers themselves, all the pain and suffering of people who, against their will, turned out to be participants and hostages of a senseless and merciless meat grinder.

This photo is the first to be seen by everyone who enters the hall of the museum. famous photo, symbolizing the end of that war - the sincere happiness of a girl who lost both hands in it, but is insanely happy with the usual, peaceful rain, and not Agent Orange falling from the sky ...

There are several halls in the museum, but I will start with the most recent one. You want to leave as soon as you enter here.
This hall is dedicated to the largest ecocide in the history of all wars.
The Americans, who could not do anything about the massive and fierce guerrilla resistance in the dense jungle-covered terrain, used extremely brutal tactics. They used a terrible chemical weapon called Agent Orange - a mixture of defoliants and synthetic herbicides that burned out all the vegetation in the vast area over which it was sprayed. And the worst thing is that this mixture contains a very high concentration of dioxin, which causes cancer and genetic mutations in people in contact with them.

This is what the mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta looked like shortly after the use of Agent Orange here. In total, during the war, more than 14% of the territory of Vietnam was exposed to this poison. According to the US Department of Defense, from 1962 to 1971, the Americans sprayed 77 million liters of Agent Orange defoliant into South Vietnam, including 44 million liters containing dioxin.

Naturally, during the “processing” of the jungle, the defoliant also hit a huge number of people, causing severe burns that became fatal for a person.

The large-scale use of "Agent Orange" led to ecological disaster in Vietnam. The mangrove forests suffered the most - they were almost completely destroyed. Chemical weapons hit 60% of the jungle and more than 30% of the lowland forests. In the "orange" regions, single species of trees and several species of thorny grasses survived, not suitable for livestock feed. The ecological balance has been shaken, or rather, collapsed. The microbiological composition of soils and water has changed, animals, birds, fish, amphibians and even insects have almost completely disappeared.
But the worst thing is that huge concentrations of dioxin remained in the soil and water, continuing to infect people, including those who were not yet born.

When ingested, dioxin causes oncological diseases of the respiratory tract, various problems with the liver and blood, suppresses the immune system and leads to a state of so-called "chemical AIDS". It also disrupts the normal course of pregnancy, which is why more than a million Vietnamese children born after the war in the contaminated territory have serious birth defects and abnormalities.

The museum has more than a hundred photographs of the victims of "Agent Orange", taken at different times, including in the 80s, 90s and 2000s,

In the center of the hall there is, perhaps, the most terrible exhibit - a container with formalin, in which fused twins lie - the result of exposure to dioxin on the mother's body, fortunately for the twins, who died before birth ...

Orange room. Here is the horror of American crimes in Vietnam

Next to the main building of the museum there is a no less terrifying “exhibit” – a South Vietnamese prison.
Being captured meant dooming oneself to inhuman suffering and constant torture. All this happened in such prisons on both sides of the front line.

Cell-cells, open from above for the convenience of observing prisoners, feeding them and ... bullying.

The interior of the cell and the wax figure of a prisoner chained to a special device that does not even allow him to sleep properly.

Instruments of torture. As a rule, these were simple sticks, nunchucks, hooks, as well as telephones, with the help of which the prisoners were shocked.

Guillotine and wicker head box

Lying cells - another sophisticated torture

Weapons used in Vietnam by the Americans.
Needle bomb. Terrible weapon.
The filling of such a bomb is hundreds of needles, which, when the bomb explodes, scatter to the sides, hitting everything around them.

Such "fragments" are poorly visible even on x-rays, which makes it difficult medical care wounded. Needle bombs are banned by the 1980 UN Convention.

Butterfly mine push action

Ball bomb. “Works” in the same way as needle and is also prohibited by the 1980 UN Convention.

Exhibits of American military equipment are exhibited in the courtyard of the museum.

Attack aircraft A-1 Skyraider. These aircraft took part in the first raid on North Vietnam on August 5, 1964. low speed and big time being in the air allowed the A-1 to escort rescue helicopters, including over North Vietnam. Having reached the area where the downed pilot was located, the Skyraders began patrolling and, if necessary, suppressed the identified enemy anti-aircraft positions. In this role, they were used almost until the end of the war.

A-37 Dragonfly light two-seat attack aircraft (based on Cessna), developed on the basis of the T-37 training aircraft in the mid-1960s. Actively used during the Vietnam War. In the design of the A-37, there was a return to the idea of ​​an attack aircraft as a well-armored aircraft in close support of troops, which was subsequently developed during the creation of the Su-25 and A-10 attack aircraft.

The famous Huey is the Bell UH-1 Iroquois. UH-1 became the main helicopter armed forces USA in South-East Asia and one of the symbols of the Vietnam War. The newly formed 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) Division, which arrived in Vietnam in September 1965, received the first experience of the massive use of the Huey in a combat situation. She was the first division in the world in which the main means of moving personnel were not armored personnel carriers, but helicopters.

The armament of the Huey modification, known as the Gunship

In the cockpit of a Boeing CH-47 Chinook military transport helicopter.

Chinooks were actively used during the Vietnam War and they were also actively shot down - in total, about 200 helicopters were lost by the Americans for combat and operational reasons. During the Vietnam War, pilots first encountered RPG-7 grenade launchers, from which a lot of these machines were shot down. In one case, 29 American soldiers were killed in a Chinook shot down from this grenade launcher.

Landing boat. They were actively used in the Mekong Delta, which is replete with thousands of rivers and channels.

American bomber wing

Air bombs that literally sowed the South Vietnamese jungle.

In eight years, 17 million aerial bombs were dropped on South Vietnam and 217 million artillery shells were detonated.

Tank M41 Walker Bulldog

The Americans even had military bulldozers ...

And the Vietnamese guerrillas used light home-made bicycles, on which they quietly and imperceptibly penetrated the rear of the Americans and committed hundreds of sabotage there ...

I will end this story about the museum of the American defeat in Vietnam with one more famous photo.
This work by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut went around the world, revealing the whole ins and outs of the Vietnam War. The photo shows a 9-year-old girl, Kim Fook, with napalm burns.
On June 8, 1972, a group of civilians were heading towards government army positions when a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot mistakenly mistook the people for Viet Cong and dropped napalm bombs on them.

At the hospital, doctors concluded that the burns received by Kim Fook were fatal, but she survived and returned home after 17 plastic surgeries. In 1992 she received political refuge In Canada. Today he lives with his family in Ontario...

Pegas Tourist presents an extreme adventure in the military tunnels of Cu Chi. This is probably the most extraordinary place not only in Vietnam. Here you will not spare the time to complete the course of a young fighter in the Vietnamese jungle.
The small village of Cu Chi became famous throughout the world thanks to the amazing perseverance and hard work of the locals, who turned the village into a giant underground city, who rummaged for 15 years with improvised means right under the nose of an unsuspecting American infantry!
Rooms for rest and meetings, smokeless kitchens and ventilation, a system of backup moves and a whole arsenal of traps, falling into which, not a single pursuer left alive, stretch underground for 187 kilometers!
This is a great opportunity to feel the spirit of military resistance and even shoot from the very popular Kalashnikov among the Vietnamese partisans!

war TV (War Remnants museum, or Bảo Tàng Chứng Tích Chiến Tranh) is located in Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon); it is also known as the war crimes museum, or museum military history. This is the only museum in the world that has collected in its exposition such a large amount of evidence of American war crimes committed on the territory of Vietnam in the period from 1957 to 1975.

Before talking about the exposition, I would like to introduce you to the history of this museum and tell you why it was created.

The history of the creation of the museum

In 1959, Vietnam celebrated its 15th anniversary people's army. In honor of this, in Saigon, in several old small houses, the Army Museum was opened. After 6 years, in 1965, a full-scale invasion of American troops began. During the aggressive aggression, the Americans placed their information service in the museum.

On September 4, 1975, after Vietnam gained independence, the museum resumed its activities here. But now his mission was radically different from the original: employees began to collect photographs, artifacts and other materials confirming the brutality of the American military. The government of Vietnam was guided by the need to preserve for posterity the evidence of the blind, senseless destruction of nature and people of their country.

This is how the "House for Showing the War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government of South Vietnam" appeared - a repository of traces of the war in which the armed Americans decided to colonize exotic country and lost.

In 1990, showing political correctness, the references to countries and governments in the name were changed, and it turned out to be the "Museum of American War Crimes".

In 1995, relations between Vietnam and the United States improved, the name of the institution was even more smoothed out and became “Museum of War Victims”, or in other words, “Museum of War Crimes”.

In 2002, a new building was built on the site of the old houses. The funds were allocated by the state and the authorities of Ho Chi Minh City.

With the development of international tourism, the purpose and ideological orientation institutions. His goal was not to let people forget about how cruel and destructive any war is.

Today, about 2,000 people pass through the halls of the museum every day, 70% of them are foreigners. Russian-speaking tourists also drop in, because in one way or another about 3-4 thousand Soviet specialists took part in the Vietnam War.

According to museum director Huyin Ngoc Van, these buildings store more than 20,000 artifacts, films, photographs, and documents. For the convenience of tourists, the inscriptions on the explanatory plates are made in three languages: Vietnamese, English, Japanese.

Museum exposition

The museum occupies a three-story building with 6 halls and an open area where the largest exhibits are exhibited.

Thematically, the exhibition is divided into 8 parts:

1. Documents and photos (1st floor)
2. Losses of the Vietnamese side (2nd floor)
3. American casualties (3rd floor)
4. American military equipment (outdoor area)
5. Munitions Exhibition (outdoor area)
6. Tiger cages (open area)
7. Guillotine (outdoor area)
8. Temporary exposures

Below I will tell you in detail about each of them.

Documents and photos

The first floor is a collection of printed materials, photographs and documents. Shops are also located here.

The first thing that every visitor sees upon entering is a photo of a girl with amputated arms. She laughs with her head thrown back in the rain. Nearby is a dove that has opened its wings to the world a. This is what happiness looks like because the war is over.

Inside the hall is the exhibition "The world supports Vietnam in its resistance." Contains 145 artifacts and 100 documents.

The second exhibition of the hall is called "Requiem". This is the collection of war correspondent Tim Page. It is a collection of materials from professional photographers as well as ordinary soldiers.

Among them is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Associated Press employee Nick Ut. We see 9-year-old Vietnamese Kim Phuc running, her naked body covered in burns.

This happened on June 8, 1972. Several local residents were walking along the road, unaware that they were moving towards combat positions. South Vietnamese pilot peaceful people for enemy soldiers, dropped napalm bombs.

The hospital assessed that the burns received by the girl were fatal. And she survived, underwent 17 plastic surgeries and continued a normal life. Subsequently, she became a UN Goodwill Ambassador.

In 1992, Kim Fook left for Canada, having received political asylum. Today he lives with his family in Ontario.

Also among the artifacts of the 1st floor you can see the camera of the Japanese photojournalist Taizo Ichinose, pierced by a bullet.

Losses of the Vietnamese side

This exposition is located on the second floor of the museum.

There are two exhibition galleries here:

1. "Victims of "Agent Orange" in the American aggression in Vietnam";
2. "Aggressive war crimes".

I will talk about each.

1 Agent Orange Victims

A hall with orange walls, on which many photographs depicting the effects of Agent Orange are placed.

This is a poisonous synthetic mixture of defoliants and herbicides containing dioxin and its derivatives. The name comes from the fact that the barrels that served as containers had an orange stripe. During the entire war, 7 7 million liters of reagent were used.

It has been used under the Ranch Hand program since 1961 for 10 years to burn out the tropical jungle in which the partisans were hiding. Many species of animals, plants, and birds disappeared almost completely after this pollination. Reptiles, fish, and insects suffered greatly. Considerable concentrations of poison still remain in water and soil. This is called an environmental catastrophe.

In the photo you can see the remains of evergreen mangroves in the Mekong Delta: the consequences of poisoning. Instead of forest - bare dry sticks.

The impact of the reagent on people is expressed in genetic mutations, oncological diseases, the manifestation of terrible deformities, causes a state of "chemical AIDS". The worst thing is that destructive changes appear in subsequent generations.

Approximately 4.8 million Vietnamese received disabilities of varying severity.

The photographs show disfigured people, including children, with deformed body parts, or even without them at all, with neoplasms on their bodies and heads.

Thorxo Abdermine Pagus (Mutilations of Unborn Children) is a separate exhibition within the Agent Orange gallery. Here visitors will see vessels with alcoholized human embryos. Mother, fortunately, died before their birth and did not see the terrible deformity of her children.

2. Aggressive war crimes

This galley of hers is dedicated to an event that went down in history under the name "Massacre in Song My". Evidence of a massacre in My Son Province is presented. Among them are the memories of two miraculously surviving women - Pham Ti Lai and Ti Nang.

The American soldiers were told that the enemy had occupied the village and that a serious battle was coming. However, the fighters did not meet armed resistance. Residents worked in the fields, while the elderly and children sat at home. The Americans, seeking to suppress the country at any cost, dealt with everyone they met along the way. They dragged people out of the huts and brutally destroyed them, while pushing and dumping them into heaps.

Consequences - 504 dead. Among them are 89 men, 182 women (including 17 pregnant women), 173 children and 60 old people.

American losses

American soldiers provided exhibits and artifacts to the museum as a token of regret for participating in this war. They are located on the 3rd floor of the building.

Among the exhibits are military awards for US Army veterans, photographs of destroyed cities taken by military photographers, as well as some other materials.

American military equipment

Here, outside the main building, you can see samples of armored vehicles, aircraft, engineering vehicles used during the war.

Among others, exhibited:

• The UH1 helicopter is one of the symbols of war, familiar to the general public from the cult film Apocalypse Now.
• M41 (Bulldog) - light tank produced since 1951. Hundreds of these vehicles were imported to Vietnam, but almost all of them were destroyed or captured.
• Attack aircraft A-1 - this aircraft with an outdated piston engine was developed during the Second World War. In Vietnam, it was actively used as a support aircraft.
• The F-5 fighter is the latest jet aircraft for that time.
• Landing boat
• Tank M-48
• The CH-47 helicopter is one of the most famous transport helicopters in the world, which is still actively used by the US military.
• Aircraft A-3 7 with the inscription on the board "U.S. AIR FORCE" (US Air Force). Made in the USA, was part of the South Vietnamese Air Force. Later, captured by the North Vietnamese, he continued to fight on their side.

A little further away - light bicycles, which the Vietnamese made themselves and penetrated behind enemy lines for sabotage.

Exhibition of ammunition

Here, mainly, samples of weapons of the American side are presented.

You can see:

• Bomb BLU-82 - "Daisy Mower";
• Butterfly mine, which is triggered by pressure;
• Containers for missiles;
• Experimental projectile poisons, at that time classified. Later they were banned by the International one convention for use in all countries:
• Fleshchet, needle bomb. When it burst, tiny darts flew rapidly out of it. They, getting into the human body and getting stuck in the tissues, were not detected even on x-rays. Providing medical assistance and alleviating suffering was almost impossible. It remained to watch the victim slowly and painfully die.
• Ball bomb. The principle of operation is like that of a needle.

tiger cages

"Prickly cages of tigers" - prisons invented by the French. They held political prisoners. In order to get the most clear idea, prisoner mannequins were used in the exhibition.

People stripped naked were stuffed into cages made of barbed wire. In the heat - more, more crowded. In the cold, on the contrary, one or two, chained for reliability. It is impossible to lean on the walls. You won't be able to fall asleep. The scorching sun, the beatings of jailers. You can neither exchange a word, nor cough, nor leave the cell as needed. The diet of the prisoners is a little rice and dried fish. Water was obtained in a can. This should have been enough for a day to drink and use for hygiene. Women were especially tormented in such a conclusion.

For more sophisticated bullying, recumbent cells were invented.

Guillotine

Perhaps the most impressive artifact. Next to it is a wicker basket for heads.

The same French brought this executioner's tool to Vietnam at the beginning of the 20th century. However, with its help, the local population and other colonizers were destroyed.

Temporary exhibitions

In addition to daily activities, the museum periodically organizes events with various related topics such as culture, cuisine, and so on.

For example, in culinary programs wartime dishes are presented: tapioca, rice sauce, bant-tet, banh-woog and so on.

popular cultural programs with the theme of love in war.

Change one after another temporary thematic exhibitions, in particular, about Vietnamese culture and history. One of the latest is held in conjunction with the Binh Phuoc Provincial Museum, about the suffering of its inhabitants during the war.

I talked about the most interesting exhibits. Of course, the entire exhibition is much larger: bypassing the three floors of the museum and the grounds for open sky It can easily take 2-3 hours.

How to get to the museum

The War Crimes Museum is located near the center of Ho Chi Minh City:

• Address: Ho Chi Minh City, 2 8 Vo Van Tan Street (on the corner with Le Cui Don Street), Third District.
• You can get here by taxi or buses of routes 06, 1 4, 28.

In addition, you can contact me and order sightseeing tour in Ho Chi Minh City, during which we will visit not only this museum, but also other most interesting places former Saigon. To contact me, use the "Contacts" section.

Museum of war victims (War Remnants museum) on the map of Ho Chi Minh City

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Building a route...

What to see nearby

The museum is located near the center of Ho Chi Minh City and there are many interesting places nearby.

Former residence of the South Vietnamese President. Today, the palace is surrounded by a large well-groomed garden, which is pleasant to walk around. By the way, here you will find another response to that war - an F-5 fighter mounted on a pedestal, as well as several tanks.

Copy of the famous Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris. Interestingly, most of the materials for the construction of this shrine were brought straight from France. For you to understand, it was in the second half of the 11th century, when it was much more difficult to deliver all these materials than now.

largest trading floor cities where you can find goods for every taste - from outright fakes for world brands to unique products of local craftsmen.

In times when there was no Internet, mail was the only way to communicate between people. But the main post office of Ho Chi Minh City is still working, so today you can send a postcard from here to yourself or your friends. Or just take a walk through the building of the century before last, which was designed by the famous Gustave Eiffel.

For those who are interested in the TOP main attractions of Vietnam, I recommend visiting the Vietnam Attractions page.

The museum is open daily, including holidays:

• From 07:30 to 12:00
• From 13:30 to 17:00

It is necessary to plan a visit taking into account the fact that during the lunch break from 12:00 to 13:30 all visitors are removed from the museum.

The most convenient time to visit is in the morning, when there is still no heat.

Phone: +84 8 829 0325

Entrance ticket price:

• VND 15.000 - for foreigners;
• VND 2.000 - for Vietnamese.

There are no special restrictions when visiting the museum. Photo and video shooting are allowed. The only thing the administration asks guests is not to dress too provocatively.

Caution must be exercised when visiting the museum by children, pregnant women and persons with reduced emotional stability.

In the Museum of War Victims, you can often meet visitors silently standing with a frozen look in front of an exhibit, document or artifact. Sometimes you can't hold back your tears. Although people knew about the war in Vietnam before, they hardly imagined such dire and devastating consequences.

You can visit this attraction as part of the following excursions:

I invite you on an inexpensive day trip, during which you will get to know the main attractions of the city in a few hours. it great option if you have little time or you have just arrived in Vietnam and do not yet know where to start your vacation.

Ho Chi Minh City Tour (Saigon) is a sightseeing tour during which we will visit Notre Dame de Saigon Cathedral, Vinh Nghiem Pagoda, Museum of Military History, Ben Thanh Market, as well as an exhibition of lacquerware. I will accompany you, Russian-speaking guide Dinh Chong Hai. On this page you will find out the details of the tour of Ho Chi Minh City, prices and conditions of organization, and you can also order it.

The excursion from Vung Tau to Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta is a two-day trip. On the first day, we will visit Notre Dame de Saigon Cathedral, Vinh Nghiem Pagoda, War Victims Museum, Ben Thanh market and lacquerware exhibition. And the whole next day we will devote to a boat trip on the Mekong River.

There are over a dozen museums in Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon). Some of them are visited annually by up to half a million tourists. If you want to get acquainted with the history and art of Vietnam, learn more about the life of people and the struggle of our people for independence, I advise you to visit at least a few museums in the city. Choose the places of your choice, and I will arrange a tour according to your wishes.

2) original name of this museum is "House for displaying the war crimes of US imperialism and the puppet government of South Vietnam." This name changed several times, but the essence of these names remained the same. last name talks about the liberal processes in Vietnam and the establishment of relations with America. The entire exposition is located in several buildings and is divided into eight themes. Captured by the Vietnamese american technology and unexploded ordnance are on display in the courtyard of the museum. In the room itself there are many photographs showing the effects of toxic substances on the inhabitants of Vietnam, as well as "tiger cages" for holding political prisoners. The "tiger cage" is a special cell for prisoners who were considered recalcitrant by the Saigon authorities. Size - 2.7 x 1.5 x 3 meters. In hot weather, from 5 to 14 people were stuffed into the cell, in cold weather they left one or two chained to a metal pin. They were not allowed out of the cell for any reason. Narrow passages were left for the jailers. There were any reasons for beating - talking, coughing, even a slap on the body in order to kill a mosquito. The food was a handful of rice with a couple of pieces of dried rotten fish. The water ration was half a tin can per day - this is for drinking and for personal hygiene, which brought special torment to female prisoners.

3) Previously, this building housed the Army Museum, which was opened in December 1959 in honor of the 15th anniversary of the formation of the country's people's army.

4) Among the captured American military equipment there is a Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy military transport helicopter, which has been produced since 1962.

5) Tank "Patton" 48 1952-1959 production.

6) And this is the familiar Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, which transported me and our Russian team from Baghdad to the base where we worked and back.

7) American-made attack aircraft A-37 (serial number 70-1285). This aircraft served in the South Vietnamese Air Force, then was captured by the North Vietnamese and continued to serve in the Vietnamese Air Force. Despite this, the aircraft is in the museum with American identification marks and the inscription U.S. AIR FORCE (that is, the US Air Force) on board.

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8) A person was placed in the “Tiger Cage” cage. Its walls are made of barbed wire. A person could not lean on the walls and fall asleep. The cage was exposed to the open sun, and people completely undressed. great torment.

9) This is how the mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta looked shortly after the use of "Agent Orange" here. In total, during the war, more than 14% of the territory of Vietnam was exposed to this poison. According to the US Department of Defense, from 1962 to 1971, the Americans sprayed 77 million liters of Agent Orange defoliant into South Vietnam, including 44 million liters containing dioxin.

10) "Agent Orange" (eng. Agent Orange) - the name of a mixture of defoliants and herbicides of synthetic origin. It was used as a chemical weapon by the US Army in the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971 as part of the Ranch Hand devegetation program. The name came from the orange color of the barrels used to transport defoliants.

11) 2 female survivors, Pham Ti Lai and Ti Nang, after the massacre in Song My: 501 dead (according to American data 280 people) from 1 to 82 years old, including 173 children, 182 women (17 pregnant women), 60 men older 60 years.
“When the Americans came to the village, they took us out of the houses, pushed us in the back with rifle butts, so that we would go into the ditch, where more than a hundred people were already standing. They forced us to our knees and immediately began to shoot from behind with machine guns. Of our family of 11, only me and mine survived. youngest child- I closed it myself. Three corpses fell on top of me, and it was only thanks to them that we survived: they hid us from the Americans.”

12) In March 1968, the command of the operational group "Barker" received intelligence information that the headquarters and some units of the Viet Cong are located in the village community of Song My (the Americans called this area "Pinkville"). An operation was planned to destroy the headquarters, which was given great importance, since the 48th Battalion of the South Vietnam Liberation Army has so far successfully avoided direct combat with American units. According to the plan of the command, Company C ("Charlie") of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Captain Ernest Medina, was to land from helicopters west of the community, another company to block the community from the north, and a third company, if necessary, to reinforce C Company or land somewhere else. Up to this point, C Company had been engaged only in patrolling and organizing ambushes, during which it managed to suffer losses, mostly unanswered - from traps and mines. On March 14, the company lost staff sergeant George Cox, respected by the soldiers. At the memorial service for the sergeant, Captain Medina gave a speech, common sense which boiled down to the need to take revenge on the enemy.

13) Before the operation, the soldiers were instructed that locality occupied by an enemy ready to offer fierce resistance, the presence of civilians is not expected. Through unknown channels, information has been received that the civilians of the village are going to the market in the morning, so the village will be empty. For the soldiers of C Company, this was to be the first serious battle and an opportunity to avenge their fallen comrades. Medina also ordered that all buildings be burned, livestock killed and crops destroyed to prevent the use of all this by the enemy.
The operation began on the morning of March 16, 1968. After a 5-minute preparatory artillery barrage, Company C was dropped from helicopters near Milay-4. As it turned out, there was not a single enemy soldier in the village (a small militia unit that was in Milay left the village immediately after the landing began). However, the soldiers opened fire on the villagers who were working in the rice fields. At about 8 o'clock the company began an attack on the village, conducting continuous fire. In the village, the soldiers of the company began to throw grenades at the huts and shoot their inhabitants with automatic weapons. Groups of fugitives hiding in roadside ditches were destroyed with automatic weapons. A group of 50 peasants hiding in a pit at the far end of the village were shot on the orders of the commander of the 1st platoon, Lieutenant William Kelly. Later, about 100 prisoners were destroyed, whom the soldiers captured in the village. The same was done in neighboring village Bintei.

14) Not all military personnel of the company took part in the killings. Many remained on the sidelines, one soldier shot himself in the leg to be evacuated by an ambulance helicopter. Of the 100 American soldiers who entered the village, 30 were involved in the killings. The observation helicopter pilot of Company B, 123rd Aviation Battalion, Hugh Thompson, who was observing the events from the air, landed his OH-23 between a group of Vietnamese peasants hiding in a makeshift bomb shelter and American soldiers intending to kill them. Thompson ordered the gunner and flight engineer to open fire on the American infantry if they tried to kill the Vietnamese. Then Thompson called for helicopters to evacuate the wounded Vietnamese (11 people were evacuated, another child was picked up in an irrigation ditch where the dead and dying lay).

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16) On February 25, 1969, between 20:00 and 21:00, a group of SEAL rangers (one of the most selective groups of American special forces), led by Lieutenant Bob Kerry, entered settlement 5 of Thanh Fon village, Thanh Phu county, Ben Che province. They slit the throats of 66-year-old Bui Van Wpat and 62-year-old Lu Thi Canh, dragged their three grandchildren out of their hideout, killing two and disemboweling one. Further, the rangers walked through the dugouts where other families were hiding, shot 15 civilians (including three pregnant women), opened the stomach of one girl. Only 12-year-old Bui Thi Luom survived, having been wounded in the foot.
It wasn't until 2001 that Senator Bob Kerry confessed to the international community that he had committed a crime."

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18) The work of Associated Press photographer Nick Ut went around the world, revealing the whole ins and outs of the Vietnam War. The photo shows a 9-year-old girl, Kim Fook, with napalm burns.
On June 8, 1972, a group of civilians were heading towards government army positions when a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot mistakenly mistook the people for Viet Cong and dropped napalm bombs on them.
At the hospital, doctors concluded that the burns received by Kim Fook were fatal, but she survived and returned home after 17 plastic surgeries. In 1992, she received political asylum in Canada. Today he lives with his family in Ontario...

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26) The following photographs show the effects of exposure to defoliants and herbicides on the human body.

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28) In Vietnam, polygamy was actively practiced for many centuries until its ban by the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1959, but after this war, illegal polygamy, caused by a gender imbalance resulting from the death a large number men during this war, remained quite common (friend Tuan, a roommate in 2010-2013 while studying at RUDN University, said that at one time the Vietnamese government appealed to the people with a request to actively have as many children as possible in families to restore the population. According to him, by 1980, 6 million dead had been compensated.

29) 64% of the dead American soldiers were under 21 years old, among those killed the largest regional group were from California.
By 1975, there were 83,000 amputees in South Vietnam, 30,000 blind, and 10,000 war-deaf.

30) "Hell disco in the jungle", as American soldiers and officers called the Vietnam War. Despite overwhelming superiority in weapons and forces (the number of US troops in Vietnam in 1968 was 540,000 people), they failed to defeat the guerrillas. Even carpet bombing, during which American aircraft dropped 6.7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, could not "drive the Vietnamese into the Stone Age." At the same time, the losses of the US army and their allies were constantly growing. During the years of the war, the Americans lost 58,000 people in the jungle killed, 2,300 missing and over 150,000 wounded. At the same time, the list official losses did not include Puerto Ricans who were recruited into the US military to obtain United States citizenship. Despite occasional successful military operations, President Richard Nixon realized that final victory could not be achieved.

31) Desertion during the Vietnam campaign was a fairly widespread phenomenon. Suffice it to recall that the famous American heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay converted to Islam at the peak of his career and took the name Muhammad Ali so as not to serve in the American army. For this act, he was stripped of all titles and suspended from competition for more than three years. After the war, President Gerald Ford in 1974 offered pardons to all draft evaders and deserters. More than 27,000 people came to confession. Later, in 1977, the next head of the White House, Jimmy Carter, pardoned those who fled the United States so as not to be drafted.

33) Most of the Vietnamese were on the side of the partisans. They provided them with food, intelligence information, recruits and labor. In his writings, David Hackworth quotes Mao Zedong's saying that "the people are to the guerrillas what water is to fish: remove the water and the fish will die." “The factor that soldered and cemented the communists from the very beginning was their strategy for a revolutionary war of liberation. Without this strategy, the victory of the communists would have been impossible. Vietnam War must be seen through the lens of strategy people's war that this is not a question of manpower and technology, that such things are not relevant to the problem," wrote another American historian Philip Davidson.

34) America was rocked by thousands of protesters against the Vietnam War. A new movement, the hippies, emerged from the youth protesting against this war. The movement culminated in the so-called "Pentagon Campaign", when up to 100,000 young people gathered in Washington in October 1967 to protest against the war, as well as protests during the Congress Democratic Party USA in Chicago in August 1968. Suffice it to recall that John Lennon, who opposed the war, wrote the song "Give Peace a Chance". Drug addiction, suicide, desertion spread among the military. Veterans were pursued by the "Vietnamese Syndrome", because of which thousands former soldiers and officers committed suicide (20,000 veterans committed suicide by 1993, according to the medical journal Federal Practitioner). Under such conditions, it was pointless to continue the war.

35) If comrades from China provided mainly economic assistance and manpower, then the USSR provided Vietnam with its most advanced weapons. So, according to rough estimates, assistance to the USSR is estimated at $ 8-15 billion, and the financial costs of the United States, based on modern estimates, exceeded a trillion US dollars. In addition to weapons, the Soviet Union sent military specialists to Vietnam. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, about 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 thousand soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces, took part in the hostilities. In addition, more than 10,000 Vietnamese military personnel were trained in military schools and academies of the USSR.

36) As a result of the use of chemicals, the ecological balance of Vietnam has seriously changed. In the affected areas, out of 150 species of birds, 18 remained, there was an almost complete disappearance of amphibians and insects, the number of fish in the rivers decreased and their composition changed. The microbiological composition of soils was disturbed, plants were poisoned. The number of tree and shrub species of the humid tropical forest has sharply decreased: in the affected areas there are single species of trees and several species of thorny grasses that are not suitable for livestock feed. Mangrove forests (500,000 ha) were almost completely destroyed, 60% (about 1 million ha) of jungle and 30% (more than 100,000 ha) of lowland forests were affected. Since 1960, the yield of rubber plantations has decreased by 75%. Destroyed from 40 to 100% of crops of bananas, rice, sweet potatoes, papaya, tomatoes, 70% of coconut plantations, 60% of hevea, 110 thousand hectares of casuarina plantations

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