After South Vietnam fell to communist forces on April 30, 1975, I drove 18 miles east from Saigon to the town of Bien Hoa, the site of a huge U.S. military complex.
I will never forget watching a teenage Viet Cong jungle fighter sampling for the first time a cold fruit drink made by a Bien Hoa street vendor with a blender liberated from the U.S. commissary. From the look of wonder on the kid's face, I am certain he had never before seen or tasted ice.I also cannot forget the military treasures, donated by the United States and abandoned by South Vietnam's fleeing forces, I saw in and around the Bien Hoa-Long Binh military complex, which included a huge air base.
The victorious North Vietnamese and Viet Cong confiscated an awesome arsenal, including warplanes and other weaponry, as well as heavy equipment and the sturdy trucks known to U.S. GIs as the deuce and a half.
On Sunday, 15 years to the day after the last of the Americans were fleeing Saigon on the eve of South Vietnam's surrender, I returned to Bien Hoa.
This time I made the trip on Highway 1, built by the Americans, with driver Tran Van Ni in his 1958 Chevrolet, a nifty car obviously superior to the French-built Bien Hoa taxis, which Ni said were a half-century old.
Crossing a bridge over the Saigon river, I spotted huge warehouses built by the Americans.
We stopped en route at a massive cemetery that Ni said was "for those who died for the revolution."
Towering over the graves is a statue of a woman. Ni said it honors all the Vietnamese women "who gave their sons for the revolution."
Family groups laid flowers and burned incense at the base of the statue, then stood in silence.
At Long Binh, there was nothing left of the huge tent camp I remembered - only water buffalo grazing on an empty expanse.
Vietnamese soldiers stood guard at a gate to the old U.S. air base at Bien Hoa.
We passed some light industry, including a textile mill and a plywood factory. At a garage, we watched Vietnamese mechanics working on trucks once used by the U.S. Army.
At a tourist center on the outskirts of Bien Hoa, I was asked to pay 100 Dong - less than a nickel - to photograph a U.S. Chinook helicopter.
I paid, generously refraining from mentioning that as a U.S. taxpayer I already had helped pay for the chopper.
My hosts said there was no charge for photographing a stack of presumably defused U.S. bombs on display.
In Bien Hoa, I met Tranh Cong Khanh, who finished his pilot training in Texas and returned to South Vietnam to fight just 13 days before it fell.
"This government doesn't trust me," Khanh said in explaining why he cannot get a job and wants to emigrate with his wife and three children to the United States.
In Ho Chi Minh City, one of the few present at the anniversary ceremony with a claim to U.S. citizenship, besides myself, was Le Thi Thu, a 19-year-old street vendor of cigarettes.
Le is an Amerasian, the blond offspring of a Vietnamese mother and an American father - parentage that allows her to stake a claim for U.S. citizenship.
"I want to go to the United States," said Le, displaying copies of documents that indicated she has applied to emigrate.
The Amerasians are part of America's legacy in Vietnam, whose citizens often scorn them as half-breeds.
The fortunate ones find a place in the Orderly Departure Program sponsored by Vietnam and the United Nations.
Before I photographed her, Le removed her cap to display the blond hair she considers her ticket to a better life in the United States.
Looking straight into the camera, Le smiled as broadly and as hopefully as a Miss America contestant.
At the huge Roman Catholic cathedral near the palace grounds there was only one sparsely attended Mass on what the Vietnamese celebrate as "Liberation Day."
"But on Sundays we celebrate six Masses and each of them is attended by more than 700 people," said the Rev. Nguyen Van Pham.
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(Additional information)
Heads high - and hands out
Vietnam's communists, facing economic difficulty and political uncertainty, Monday celebrated the 15th anniversary of their victory over the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government with traditional dragon dances and fireworks.
Nguyen Van Linh, general secretary of the Communist Party, told United Press International that Vietnam wanted to forget the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and renew relations.
"We wish to forget the past and we wish to have cooperation with the American people and the American government," Linh said in an impromptu interview at the anniversary celebration.
Linh spoke in a park behind the presidential palace where a North Vietnamese tank smashed through the gates April 30, 1975, to end the 20-year struggle to reunite the country.
He called for an end to an American embargo on aid and trade with Vietnam, admitting that Vietnam faced "many difficulties."
Linh said the anniversary marked the end of more than a century of colonialism, division and war as well as the victory over the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam.
Communist leaders and invited guests listened to speeches and watched an exhibition of dragon dances, fireworks and the music of Vietnam's ethnic minority.
Gen. Tran Van Tra, commander of the communist forces that captured what was then Saigon, said the victory was glorious, but he called for new contacts with American veterans of the Vietnam War.
Tra, who has occasionally criticized the Communist Party, said major mistakes had been made after the victory, such as trying to force the country to adapt to socialism too quickly.
After the ceremony, he told UPI the country had to fight corruption, excessive bureaucracy, theft of government property, incompetence and lack of democracy.