Vietnam celebrates 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City — formerly known as Saigon — for Wednesday’s big military parade marking the 50th anniversary of the end of Vietnam’s war with the United States.

Lots of people even camped out overnight to get a good seat for viewing the official festivities.

Vietnamese fighter jets streaked over the city, releasing flares and doing barrel rolls, while a formation of helicopters went past flying giant national flags. 

On the ground, crowds waved the same flag — bright red with a single yellow star — as they cheered the columns of soldiers marching by. 

Most Americans remember the Vietnam War as one of the longest and most-unpopular conflicts in US history that ultimately ended in military defeat. The 20-year war saw nearly 60,000 US troops killed and some 3 million Vietnamese deaths.

But in Vietnam, the 50th anniversary is a moment for national pride and jubilation — it’s about reunification of the country’s North and South and the end of a much-longer struggle for self-determination.    

On Wednesday, To Lam, the Vietnam Communist Party’s general secretary, delivered a speech at the anniversary celebration in Ho Chi Minh City. And he talked about national unity. 

“All the Vietnamese are the descendants of Vietnam,” he said. “They have the rights to live and work, to have freedom to pursue happiness and love in this country.”

He mentioned the importance of getting over the past and respecting differences, and looking toward the future. And, he described Vietnam as a country of peace, unity, prosperity and development.

Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in Vietnam studies at the Yusof Ishak Institute, a think tank in Singapore, said that in years past, the official tone of the April 30th anniversary in Vietnam was more strident and nationalistic.

But that is changing. 

“Overwhelmingly, I still believe that the message is still about victory, about Vietnam’s long war against imperialists [and] unification under the communist party’s guidance. But I think there has been some change in the way the war is remembered.” 

“Not just victories, not just glories, but also traumas as well. And I think that’s very important for Vietnam to start, even though very late, to start thinking about that, how to reconcile these people who stayed in the country and the people who left Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War.” 

Nguyen said April 30 is not just about the end of Vietnam’s war against the United States. 

“The American war for Vietnam should be considered as an extension of the long independence struggle, not just a single piece of history.” 

And that struggle goes back more than 100 years, to Vietnam’s fight against French colonial rule; the invasion by Japan during World War II; and only later, two decades of war against the mighty US military.

Nguyen said that the communist government has been successful in cultivating patriotism, even with people in their teens and 20s.

“I believe there was a kind of manufactured patriotism. So, in the way that the state tried to revise the nationalist feelings among the younger generation to legitimize their rule.” 

The legitimacy of the one-party state in Vietnam is built on the notion of independence and defending the country’s sovereignty in the face of foreign threats.  

A key moment in that national narrative was when North Vietnamese tanks drove up to the presidential palace in Saigon 50 years ago.

Jim Laurie was one of the few foreign journalists who stayed to cover the fall of Saigon for NBC News. 

He witnessed the helicopters evacuating US personnel, with crowds of terrified South Vietnamese civilians looking for a way out of the country.

“I came away with this conflicted feeling of, we had spent all this much time in Vietnam and left some very good people behind to fend for themselves as the communists descended upon the capital city of what was South Vietnam,” said Laurie, who spoke from Ho Chi Minh City where he’s attending some of the anniversary celebrations.  

Laurie said that people in Vietnam these days don’t talk very much about the war, at least directly. 

“What they talk about is their liberation and their reunification, the unification of the nation, North and South. That’s what they emphasize. And they emphasize all the progress they’ve made, particularly since roughly 1995 when they began to emerge as a prosperous country.” 

In 2023, the government in Vietnam named its former enemy, the United States, as a “comprehensive strategic partner.” That’s the highest diplomatic status Vietnam gives to any country, and it’s the same level of relations it maintains with both China and Russia.