![]() At Huu Tiep Lake, which is located at the quiet junction of two residential alleys, vendors sell fresh produce without glancing at the wreckage of a B-52 that was shot down there in 1972 and still juts out of the water as a memorial. ![]() As an American who has lived in the Vietnamese capital for three years, I rarely hear the conflict discussed. But it has gradually opened to foreign investment, becoming one of the fastest-growing economies in East Asia. ![]() But North Vietnam’s war generation experienced those events differently, and several told me recently what it was like to be on the “winning” side.ĭecades after what’s known here as the “ American War,” Vietnam remains a communist state. In the United States, the story of America and South Vietnam’s defeat is familiar. More than 58,000 American soldiers died in the fighting between 19 the estimated number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed on both sides varies widely, from 2.1 million to 3.8 million during the American intervention and in related conflicts before and after. intervened on behalf of South Vietnam’s anti-communist government. The holiday involves little explicit reflection on the country’s 15-year-plus conflict, in which North Vietnam and its supporters in the South fought to unify the country under communism, and the U.S. The event, known in the United States as the fall of Saigon and conjuring images of panicked Vietnamese trying to crowd onto helicopters to be evacuated, is celebrated as Reunification Day here in Hanoi. “There were no bombs or airplane sounds or screaming. “All the roads were flooded by people holding flags,” Nguyen, now 65, told me recently. ![]() The city was about to become the capital of a unified Vietnam. That morning, as communist troops swept into the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon and forced the U.S.-backed government to surrender, the North Vietnamese Army soldier marked the end of the war along with a crowd of people in Hanoi. HANOI, VIETNAM-Forty years ago, on April 30, 1975, Nguyen Dang Phat experienced the happiest day of his life. ![]()
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