Vietnam buries remains of dead from mass grave

TET OFFENSIVE: Some of the people attending the ceremony were witnesses to the bodies being buried following the communist attack in the late 1960s

Thousands carrying white flowers lined the roads in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City yesterday as the remains of 731 people believed to have been killed during the 1968 Tet Offensive were taken for burial nearly six decades after their deaths.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Le Minh Hung attended the memorial services at Le Thi Rieng Park, where the remains were recovered from mass graves after over three months of excavations.

They were laid to rest at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery in the city previously known as Saigon.

A woman stands beside caskets bearing the remains of soldiers at Le Thi Rieng Park in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, yesterday.

Photo: AFP

Generations in Vietnam have spent decades searching for loved ones who never returned from war, hoping to recover their remains, give them a proper burial and find some measure of closure.

The Tet Offensive began on Jan. 31, 1968, when North Vietnamese communist forces launched coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year holiday, known in Vietnam as Tet.

One of the largest campaigns of the Vietnam War, it sparked fierce fighting and heavy casualties, including in the southern capital, Saigon, where communist fighters attacked the US embassy, military installations and government buildings.

People watch as the remains of bodies found at Le Thi Rieng Cultural Park are transferred for burial at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery in Vietnam yesterday.

Photo: AP

Although the communist forces suffered a military defeat, the offensive shocked Washington, undermined US public support for the war, and became a turning point in the conflict.

“The resultant conflict has changed the pattern of the war,” The Associated Press reported in February 1968.

The South Vietnamese government collected the bodies of communist fighters and civilians, and buried them in mass graves during and after the fighting, according to Vietnamese government news.

Workers fill a mass grave at a cemetery in what was then Saigon, Vietnam, on Feb. 12, 1968.

Photo: AP

The remains at Le Thi Rieng Park, which was previously the site of Do Thanh Cemetery, were discovered during excavations that began on June 23 at the park.

Over weeks, excavators painstakingly unearthed bones and fragments, along with weapons, ammunition, military hammocks and personal belongings, the Vietnamese government’s official news portal reported.

They discovered a wallet containing a faded military document bearing the name Huynh Van Quen, which helped authorities identify one of the dead as a soldier from the 1st Long An Battalion, a communist unit that fought a fierce seven-day battle at Saigon’s Y-shaped Bridge.

Among the mourners yesterday was Vo Huy Thinh, 70, who remembered watching bodies being buried there when he was 12.

“The memory of that burial pit has stayed with me,” he told Vietnamese state media.

For years, architect Nguyen Xuan Thang pored over photographs from the Vietnam War, searching for clues to the location of the burial site.

A breakthrough came when he found a color photograph taken by an AP photographer on Feb. 12, 1968, with a caption describing three large burial trenches that each contained about 300 bodies, he told state media.

The photograph shows two men carrying a body as two others look on. Three boys stand nearby, one of them wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and looking directly at the camera. A water tower is visible in the background, providing a crucial clue to the site’s location.

The image was shot by a French photographer credited as Gautron.

Thang told state media that he spent months riding his motorbike through Ho Chi Minh City, comparing old military maps with present-day landmarks, including the water tower.

His research was part of a nearly eight-year effort, from November 2018 to May, involving his team and the military, which helped authorities narrow their search to the park.

Investigators worked with researchers, historians, journalists and witnesses to piece together the location of the mass graves.

They examined other photographs, satellite images, military maps and archival records from Vietnam and abroad, comparing them to field surveys and accounts from people who witnessed the burials, the Vietnamese government’s official news portal reported.

The recovery is part of a nationwide 500-day campaign running through July next year to locate the remains of about 7,000 war dead and identify them.

More than half a century after the war ended in 1975, many Vietnamese families are still searching for relatives who never returned home.

Of the 731 sets of remains recovered in Ho Chi Minh City, 307 were found with personal belongings, state media reported.

Most have not yet been identified.

Similar memorial and burial ceremonies were planned for today in three other parts of Vietnam, with the remains of what are believed to be 93 people to be buried in Tuyen Quang Province.

Another 65 are to be buried in Hai Phong and 120 in Can Tho.