It floats in a small lake in the middle of a quiet Hanoi neighborhood, looking like an avant-garde metal sculpture. Directly across the street is a school where young children play in a spacious courtyard, oblivious that they are so close to an eerie symbol of their country’s war-torn history.
Forty-seven years after an American B-52 bomber was shot down by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, the wreckage remains in its watery grave. It’s stuck in the bottom of shallow Huu Tiep Lake, but a twisted section of the undercarriage sits above the surface with a small tree growing through it that is constantly sprinkled by a nearby fountain. A few feet away, the tops of two tires stick out of the water, part of the landing gear that was never used on that fateful day in 1972.
On a nearby wall is a propaganda plaque celebrating the downing of the “imperialist’’ bomber and its role in leading to “national salvation’’ when the North Vietnamese defeated the U.S. and reunited the country under communist rule.
During a recent trip to Vietnam, I was frequently reminded that, despite the great economic strides the country has made in recent decades and its friendly attitude toward U.S. tourists, the painful past hasn’t been forgotten. The same was true during my stay in neighboring Cambodia, where the savage Khmer Rouge regime killed almost 2 million people in the late 1970s and then waged a 10-year war with Vietnam that pitted one communist group against another.
In Hanoi, I visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the former Hoa Lo Prison, originally built by the French to house Vietnamese political prisoners but later used by the North Vietnamese to hold U.S. pilots shot down during the Vietnam War. Mockingly nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton’’ by American POWs because of its brutal conditions, it was where John McCain spent much of his 5½ years in prison before being released in 1973.
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, built to house the body of the communist revolutionary, is a drab granite monument surrounded by gardens and fronted by a huge plaza. Visitors must pass through tight security and take a long, meandering walk to reach the 71-foot high, cube-shaped building, whose three-tiered roof is supported by symmetrical square columns.
After passing a line of white-uniformed guards, you enter the building and walk single file to the room where Uncle Ho, dressed in a plain black suit with his arms outstretched in front of him, lies in a glass case. You only get a quick glance at the body because you’re not allowed to stop and you can’t take photos.
Ho, who died in 1969, appears to be in better shape than Chairman Mao, who died seven years later. At least Ho looks like a recognizable human being. When I visited Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing five years ago, he looked like he belonged in Madame Tussauds wax museum.
What’s left of Hoa Lo Prison (most of the building was torn down in the early 1990s to make way for a luxury hotel/office complex) has been turned into a museum that mostly chronicles the horrible conditions Vietnamese prisoners suffered under French rule. There’s no mention of the equally dreadful conditions that American POWs endured under their North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War. In fact, the museum includes several plaques that brag about how wonderfully U.S. prisoners were treated at the Hanoi Hilton – a claim contradicted by McCain and other POWs who detailed torture and other inhumane treatment during their imprisonment there.
When the French ran the place, most of the inmates were Vietnamese political prisoners who opposed the foreign occupation of their country. The prisoners were confined to dark, dingy cells and forced to survive on starvation rations. Torture was common and executions were frequent, witnessed by the presence of a prison guillotine.
One of the most striking displays at the museum is a room with two rows of lifelike sculptures depicting Vietnamese prisoners. The figures are sitting on wooden benches, with one foot locked in an iron shackle. There’s also a section of an underground sewer through which more than 100 Vietnamese prisoners escaped in 1945, a communal chamber pot whose stench constantly permeated a room where inmates ate, and a stone mural featuring carvings of emaciated, shackled prisoners.
In a small section dedicated to U.S. prisoners during the Vietnam War, there’s a photo of a gravely injured McCain lying in a hospital bed after his plane was shot down, a glass case displaying the flight suit and parachute he wore, and a crumpled book filled with photos of other captured American servicemen.
Whatever your feelings are about the Vietnam War, visiting this museum is a sobering experience.
So, too, are the numerous exhibits in Cambodia recalling the “Killing Fields’’ of the Khmer Rouge. I visited one in Siem Reap, best known as the site of Angkor Wat, part of the world’s largest religious complex.
At the Wat Thmei pagoda, once the site of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison where thousands of Cambodians were slaughtered and dumped in nearby fields, I viewed an outdoor exhibit of stories and photos about this dark period when a madman named Pol Pot terrorized the country. He forced the entire population of Phnom Penh to move to the countryside to work on collective farms and killed virtually everyone suspected of being an enemy of his regime, especially teachers, doctors and any other educated Cambodians who might question his authority. Just wearing glasses, supposedly a sign of being an intellectual, could get you killed.
The memorial at Wat Thmei contains a glass case filled with the skulls of Pol Pot’s victims. Also on the grounds of the monastery are an orphanage and school, where children play in the shadow of the grisly display.
On the outskirts of Siem Reap, I toured another exhibit related to the Khmer Rouge — a privately run museum that displays weapons used during the Cambodia-Vietnam war from 1978-1989. Most of the weapons, including tanks, guns, artillery and land mines, were Soviet-made arms captured by the Khmer-led Cambodian forces. (The Soviet Union backed the Vietnamese, while China supported the Cambodians.)
The land mines, planted all over the country, were particularly destructive, leading to thousands of deaths and mutilations. In a pavilion on the site, pictures and posters tell the heartbreaking stories of land mine victims, many of whom were women and children.
One photo shows a legless boy leaning on a wooden crutch. His mournful expression is a haunting reminder of a time that no Cambodian will ever forget.
