Category: Vietnam Today
Vietnam seizes almost 4 tons of Vietnam War-era bullets
Authorities in southern Vietnam have confiscated almost 4 tons of Vietnam War-era bullets from fishermen, when coast guards intercepted a fishing boat off the coast of Binh Thuan province. The six fishermen explained that they discovered the bullets off the coast and planned to sell them for scrap metal. Now the rusty bullets will be handed over to the military for disposal.
by ap :: 2008-07-23 :: Vietnam Today
Wartime cluster bombs still reap deadly harvest in Laos
A man shapes a ball of C4 plastic explosive, and inserts it into a hole at the side of the road, attaches an electric detonator, and walks away. He's not a soldier - the war here in Laos ended over 30 years ago - but an explosives disposal expert attempting to rid his country of the conflict's lethal legacy. During the Vietnam war neighbouring Laos became the world's most heavily bombed country per head. US bombers targeting Vietnamese and Lao communist forces flew 80,000 missions over the country in the 1960s and 1970s. More explosives were delivered than in Europe during World War II.
by afp :: 2008-05-09 :: Vietnam Today
Australian veteran gives 1 million to a girl injured by a wartime artillery
Australian veteran John Papadopoulos, a conscript who served in the Vietnam War 1969-1970, has given VND1 million to a young girl from Dong Nai province who was severely injured when a wartime artillery shell exploded, killing her parents. "Hour after hour, day after day, night after night for a whole year, I was part of an artillery unit firing high explosive 105mm artillery shells all over the Dong Nai and Long Khanh countryside. And I know some of those shells failed to explode and were lying buried, waiting for another day." He says he felt partially responsible for what's happened to Nga and her parents.
by thanhniennews :: 2008-03-12 :: Vietnam Today
Vietnam War-era artillery shell explodes killing 6 children
A Vietnam War-era artillery shell detonated when a man tried sawing into it for explosives, killing 6 children standing nearby. Three of the children died instantly and the others died on the way to hospitals following incident in Tan Loi village in Binh Phuoc province, 190km north of Ho Chi Minh City, said village military chief Le Viet Truyen. Over 38,000 people have been killed since 1975 by ordnance left over from the Vietnam War.
by iht :: 2007-11-19 :: Vietnam Today
Veteran finds a country much different than the one in which he fought
Helicopters chopped overhead and artillery fired constantly in the jungles. Soldiers in forest-green fatigues trudged around the base in Cu Chi. In 1969 among them was Gerry Beaudoin, wrapping up a year of duty as a helicopter pilot. Fast forward almost 40 years. It was October 2007 in Cu Chi and Beaudoin was standing in the same spot, this time celebrating his 60th birthday. But not as a solider. As a tourist. "When I knew it before, it was just an ongoing battlefield. Now it's people carrying backpacks and drinking out of water bottles and having a guide show them around."
by southofboston :: 2007-11-05 :: Vietnam Today
Contradictory histories plague Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City is set to erect a 6.3-meter bronze-cast statue of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, the ascetic who immolated himself in protest against the US-propped South Vietnamese govt. The statue will be placed on the very spot where he was depicted in iconic photographs burning himself to death. With its raising, the Communist Party-led govt's new altered representation of the American War will be on show for the world to see. Muted is the revolutionary history against colonialism and the many decades of its oppression. The tourism industry still uses the term "foreign aggressor", but rarely directly associates it with Americans.
by atimes :: 2007-08-14 :: Vietnam Today
Cu Chi battlefield is one of Vietnam's biggest tourist attractions
Living out war-movie fantasies: Bob might be a middle-aged builder back in Essex, but you can see a gleam of martial determination in his eye as he pays $60 for a clip of ammo for his rented M-60 and instructs his Thai girlfriend to sit at the bar, sip rice wine, and watch. His beer-belly is vibrating as the US machine gun hammers away. He probably wouldn't have struck fear into the Viet Cong, but he is getting a lot of worried looks from a party of Australian tourists. 40 years ago, Cu Chi was the real thing: a napalm-scoured battlefield. Deep underground, the guerrillas excavated a network of tunnels stretching around Saigon.
by sundayherald :: 2007-07-01 :: Vietnam Today
Vietnam: Themed for war - Tourist gunfire at Cu Chi
The young American woman weighs the machine-gun in her arms. "Try it. It makes you feel so powerful," she enthuses in a southern drawl. We politely demur, it doesn't seem right. We are just a short distance from Cu Chi, where 18,000 Vietcong spent most of the 1960s living in 250km of tunnels, rising only to strike against US soldiers. After a string of unsuccessful ground raids, the Americans dealt with the impasse by shelling the Cu Chi region, 50km north-west of the southern capital Saigon, back to the Funan age. 12,000 died. Less than 40 years on, the tunnels are a low-budget war theme park.
by smh :: 2007-04-21 :: Vietnam Today
21% of Vietnam land area still affected by war-era ordnance
Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are still in 6 million hectares of land in Vietnam according to a UN agency. According to Vietnam's Ministry of Defense's Technology Center on Unexploded Ordnance and Landmine Disposal, 600,000 tons of war-era ordnance remain in the ground throughout Vietnam... From 1975 to 2000, 42,135 people were killed by landmines and UXO and a further 62,163 were injured. According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund of the US, during the 1965-1975 Vietnam War, the U.S. Armed Forces deployed more than 15 million tons of bombs, mines, artillery shells and other ordnance in the country, in which 10% did not detonate as designed.
by people :: 2007-04-07 :: Vietnam Today
A sampan tour along a delta - Where war once rages
Just over 30 years ago, the Mekong River Delta was the center of some of the most intense fighting of the Vietnam War. Today, a traveler can spend a leisurely day cruising the river with little sense of the bloodshed that occurred here. As I depart at dawn from Can Tho the Mekong emerges from the fog in all its muddy splendor. Many of the more than 3 million visitors to Vietnam each year are veterans of the Vietnam War, revisiting scenes of their youth and battle sites that stir profound memories.
by boston :: 2007-01-03 :: Vietnam Today
Bomb left from Vietnam War kills four
Four people were killed and two others injured when a bomb they planned to sell for scrap metal exploded in their Central Highlands home. The explosion killed two men and two children in Krang Village in Dak Lak Province. Unexploded ordnance and landmines left from the Vietnam War routinely kill and maim Vietnamese people, especially in rural areas where explosives remain buried in farm land. Many of the victims search for bombs to sell as scrap metal to supplement their low incomes.
by irishexaminer :: 2006-12-15 :: Vietnam Today
The last time I visited Vietnam as a tourist somebody shot at me
The last time I visited Vietnam, somebody shot at me - and I was a tourist - not a soldier. Thankfully, lots of things are different today: Saigon is Ho Chi Minh City, except that almost everyone still calls it by its original name. In 1966, when my wife and I visited Saigon, the only accommodation was a modest room one flight up. "No one wants that room," said a war correspondent Malcolm W. Browne: "It's considered within grenade-lobbing distance from the street below." Mal said he would like us to see the Mekong Delta, at that point, American troops were beginning to support South Vietnamese forces, although the fiercest battles were yet to come.
by post-gazette :: 2006-12-04 :: Vietnam Today
When a War Becomes a Tourist Attraction
Photographer Horst Faas talked about working in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and how the country has dealt with its past. -- What are your most abiding impressions of the Vietnam War? What I was unable to forget was the fate of our Vietnamese colleagues. Many of them fled in 1975 and ended up in the US. Other stayed behind and we worried about them. I tried very hard to find out what happened to them. All the ones I managed to trace suffered badly after 1975. But I've noticed a change since 2000. The Vietnamese people no longer want to emigrate. They say Vietnam has improved and they prefer to stay.
by dw-world :: 2006-11-26 :: Vietnam Today
New phase starts in Vietnam war weapons clearance
Vietnamese and Americans began the next phase of clearing hundreds of thousands of tons of unexploded Vietnam War ordnance and landmines that still kill people more than 30 years after the conflict ended. Weapons disposal experts found and destroyed 6,025 pieces of unexploded ordnance and landmines in the northern and central provinces. Since the war ended in 1975, bombs, artillery shells, mortar bombs and rockets have killed 38,000 people and wounded 64,000. 350,000 to 850,000 tons of weaponry remains scattered across 64 provinces.
by yahoo.com :: 2006-11-16 :: Vietnam Today
Vietnam remembers war heroes with practical activities
On July 27 all of Vietnam is awash with practical thanks, on the traditional day in remembrance of soldiers killed or injured during the wars. Over 200 organisations and individuals who take much care for war veterans and families, will be honoured. Deputy Minister said efforts are being to made make the lives of 95% of war victims families equal or higher than common living standards. The movement to pay gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives for the national independence has been strongly developing over the past decade.
by nhandan :: 2006-07-07 :: Vietnam Today
The path towards socialism in Vietnam
Realities in Vietnam's history show that the path combining national independence and socialism is an inevitable path. The path towards socialism has been chosen by the Party, President Ho Chi Minh, by the people and history. Vietnam's historic choice has resulted in making a landmark along its course of development: by the foundation of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1930; the August Revolution in 1945 with the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the war of resistance against the French colonialists in 1954; and the triumph in the anti-US war for national salvation and liberation of South Vietnam and national reunification in 1975.
by nhandan :: 2006-07-04 :: Vietnam Today
The Vietnam War is still killing people
Neal Richard Dixon died in 2004, 34 years after he repaired and drove tanks in Hoi An. His doctors decided that Agent Orange, a chemical used to strip foliage from trees during the war, caused the cancer that killed him. But those war casualties don't qualify for a spot on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Department of Defense allows only the names of people who died of combat wounds to be inscribed on the wall.
by dispatch :: 2006-04-17 :: Vietnam Today