A Year In Indochina: Musings on a national hero

I went for a nice swim around midday at the Phu My Hung outdoor pool, and consequently have a pinkish glow to my face. After lunch I took the bus into town to visit the Ho Chi Minh Museum, not to be confused with the Ho Chi Minh Military Museum or the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City. This one is devoted to the life of the revolutionary leader, North Vietnamese president and national hero and was once known as Uncle Ho's Museum for Mementos. The exhibits are displayed in a salmon-pink colonial building nicknamed the Dragon House, a customs house built by the French in 1863. The (thin) link between Ho Chi Minh and this building is that in 1911, the 21-year-old left Vietnam through this port to begin thirty years living abroad in the US, the UK, France, the Soviet Union and China.

Ho Chi Minh was born Nguyen Sinh Cung in 1890; at the age of ten, following Confucian tradition, he was renamed by his father as Nguyen Tat Thanh (Nguyen the Accomplished). He used the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot) while living in France and campaigning for the recognition of Vietnamese civil rights. By 1940, had adapted a Sino-Vietnamese name of Ho Chi Minh, meaning "he who enlightens". During his years overseas he undertook several menial jobs and began to establish his political ideas through involvement with the Socialist Party of France. He became one of the founding members of the Parti Communiste Francais and later spent much time working for the Moscow Comintern as a consultant on Asia.

When he returned to Vietnam in 1941, Ho had become a celebrated anti-colonial campaigner and led the Viet Minh guerilla movement in seeking independence from the French and Japanese. When Japan surrendered and left Vietnam in 1945, a general uprising in North Vietnamese towns and cities led to the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam, read by Ho Chi Minh in Ba Dinh Square, Hanoi on 2nd September, proclaiming the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). After eight years of fighting the French attempt to re-claim power, the 1954 Geneva Accords partitioned the country at the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam. The Viet Minh re-grouped in the North, where a communist government was established under the presidency of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. Ho led the country throughout most of the American War, hoping to re-unite the two factions of the country under a single, socialist leadership. Ho died at the age of 79 from heart failure before he could see through the end of the war and the capture of Saigon. He died on the 24th anniversary of the establishment of the DRV, on the 2nd September 1969.

When Saigon was taken by the North Vietnam Army and National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) forces in 1975, it was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Ho's body rests in a mausoleum in Hanoi, an imposing grey block of a building in socialist realist style. He remains a celebrated national hero from North to South. The Ho Chi Minh Museum was an extended shrine to the man, with a room dedicated to proving Uncle Ho's love for the South, and the Southern people's love for Uncle Ho. There were abundant photographs of Ho Chi Minh embracing children and in one photo, a baby deer. There was even an altar with his statue. For those who are deeply concerned with Ho Chi Minh's personal life, there were photographs of many of his homes throughout his life, as well as the first meeting places of the Communist Party of Indochina and other groups. Much of the information was only in Vietnamese and few of the photographs were dated. For me, it was a dreary and boring experience.

Of course, it was no surprise to me that the museum was so celebratory. After all, this is a state living out the legacy of Ho Chi Minh. The extent to which Ho Chi Minh is revered by the Vietnamese population is impossible to measure, but from all accounts I've heard, "everybody genuinely loves Uncle Ho", the man who brought two halves of a broken country back together, shaking off decades of colonial rule. Considering the immense national sense of suffering and grieving that stills weighs upon Vietnamese society, it is important to remember the strength of emotion that is attached to Ho Chi Minh. However, it is hard to ignore that it is only the American atrocities that are documented in Vietnamese history museums. I doubt that the missing page of the history book will be written for a long time in Vietnam. Two-thirds or more of the present-day Vietnamese population were born after 1975, and this proportion will only continue to grow, leaving those who lost family members to the short-lived North Vietnamese regime as a small voice. I'm sure Ho Chi Minh's untainted legacy will continue to thrive. For now at least, perhaps it is better to let old wounds heal.