War Photographer Carol Ann Duffy

Part 2/2: Delving Into Saigon's Past: The War Remnants Museum

Hi there! I'm Jen, and this blog combines two of my greatest passions- travel and writing. From June '09 to June '10, I spent a year working and traveling Australia and New Zealand- one of the best years of my life. This blog begins at the start of our Asia journey in India, September '10, meanders through Nepal, China and SE Asia, branches off briefly to Canada, and ends when I get bored of writing and exploring- can't see either of those happening soon. Thanks so much for dropping on by! Today, Saigon appears to be thriving. Looking up at the modern, glowing skyscrapers, it’s easy to forget that just forty years ago, Saigon was heavily bombed by the U.S forces, destroying the city. In order to understand the evolution of modern-day HCMC, I thought it was important to visit the War Remnants Museum, built in 1975 in order to retain relics and memories from the atrocities of the Vietnam War. The first time we tried to go was unsuccessful; we’d chosen the only hour of the working day to visit, and we were headed to Vung Tao that afternoon. Bloody typical! So when we returned to HCMC from Vung Tao, I made sure we paid a visit at a sensible time. We always took moto-taxi’s there and back: an exhilarating way to see the city (especially at roundabouts!)    Outside the museum are U.S tanks, and on the bottom floor are the anti-war propaganda posters from protesting countries. I’m afraid to say that though these were interesting in their own right, and the determination of these people to stand up for an unjust war was hugely courageous, what really drew me in was the effects of American warfare on innocent civilians. The room detailing how the U.S.A entered the war, after the French withdrew, helped to put the museum’s pictures and exhibits into context, but there were two other rooms that particularly touched me.    One part of the museum was dedicated to telling the stories of Vietnamese born with deformities because of the Agent Orange used during the war, some births as recent as 2008. This was one horrific aspect of the war that I hadn’t realized: those exposed to dioxin, one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man and dropped by the U.S forces into civilians’ water sources via metal pellets with an orange strip (hence the nickname ‘Agent Orange’), can pass on the exposure effects to many future generations.

Standing female nude

The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry

The poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, "choosing tough words"

The secondary English magazine

British and Irish poets, a biographical dictionary, 449-2006