Aged Vietnam generals relive Fall of Saigon
HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnam's aged generals on Tuesday joyously relived their triumph in the Vietnam War as their much changed country launched festivities to mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the fighting. For many of the last of the generations to fight in the three-decade-long war, first against the French after World War II and then against U.S.-backed South Vietnam, it was possibly the last time to join in the five-yearly celebrations publicly.
"It was joyous," said Brigadier General Hoang Dung, tears in his eyes as he spoke of "the memories playing in my head like a film," after a news conference in which he had related the 55-day campaign that ended with Saigon's fall on April 30, 1975. Now 78, Dung, who was assistant to campaign commander General Van Tien Dung, is content that Vietnam is united and at peace 30 years after their tanks crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon and South Vietnam surrendered.
He declined to talk about the current state of Vietnam, where the Communist government began unshackling the economy in the early 1990s, where corruption is rife and a crime boss was sentenced to death last year. "Of course, there remains much to be done, but the people will go forward," was all he would say when asked whether the reality of present-day Vietnam matched the dreams that drove him through so many years of war. Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after North Vietnam's revolutionary icon but still referred to commonly by its old name, is showing signs of prosperity with an economy growing at about 7 percent a year.
Prosperity
Where bicycles once clogged the streets, imported cars now weave through shoals of motorcycles. Commerce, released from a failed experiment with cooperatives, thrives.Markets are packed with goods and swarm with shoppers. A new shopping mall sells designer clothes and latest electronics.
"Anything you want to buy, you can find here," said one American businessman. Bars, closed in the years after the end of the war and their prostitutes shipped off to re-education camps, are everywhere. Discotheques featuring mini-skirted women and music loud enough to vibrate windows next door are common. But the old generals say they achieved what they set out to.
"During the war, our ideals, our dreams, our driving force was that nothing was more precious than independence and freedom," said Brigadier General Phan Khac Hy, reciting the prime Communist Party slogan of the war years. "What we wanted to see for our people was for every family to have a bowl of rice on the table every day, clothes to wear and a roof over their heads."
In Ho Chi Minh City, at least, ordinary people seem content. A taxi driver earning triple the average per capita annual income of $450 has no complaints. An ethnic Chinese trader in Cholon, the city's Chinatown of often wealthy entrepreneurs -- a prime source of Vietnamese boat people in the years after the war's end -- said life wasn't good until the early 1990s. "Then they started economic reform and opened the doors to foreign investors," he said. "Now things are all right."
By Michael Battye - Reuters - March 22, 2005
|