The War Remnants Museum (Vietnamese: Bảo tàng chứng tích chiến tranh) is a war museum at 28 Vo Van Tan, in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It primarily contains exhibits relating to the American phase of the Vietnam War.
Operated by the Vietnamese government, the museum was opened in September 1975 as "The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government [of South Vietnam]." Later it was known as the Museum of American War Crimes, then as the War Crimes Museum until as recently as 1993. Its current name follows liberalization in Vietnam and the normalization of relations with the United States.
The museum comprises a series of eight themed rooms in several buildings, with period military equipment located within a walled yard. The military equipment include a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter, an F-5A fighter, a BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" bomb, M48 Patton tank, an A-1 Skyraider attack bomber, and an A-37 Dragonfly attack bomber. Several display aircraft (F-5, A-37) have non-standard markings indicating "U.S. Air Force," but are in fact former South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) aircraft.
One building reproduces the "tiger cages" in which the South Vietnamese government housed political prisoners. Other exhibits include graphic photographs, accompanied by short copy in English, Vietnamese and Japanese, covering the effects ofAgent Orange and other chemical defoliant sprays, the use of napalm and phosphorus bombs, and atrocities such as the My Lai massacre. The photograph display includes a display of works Vietnam War photojournalist Bunyo Ishikawa donated to the museum in 1998. Curiosities include a guillotine used by the French and the South Vietnamese to execute prisoners, last in 1960, and three jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxin.
The museum is effectively a propaganda museum for the Vietnamese Communist regime, as it almost exclusively displays exhibits that are highly critical of the South Vietnamese and American war efforts during the Vietnam War. It does not exhibit anything critical of the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong's war effort or atrocities, for example of the Hue Massacre, the Dak Son Massacre and the Chau Doc massacre, the many land mines scattered across rural southern Vietnam that still lay undetonated often injuring rural villagers (particularly children) today, the brutal treatment of American Prisoners of War (POWs) between 1964 and 1973, and the brutal treatment of political prisoners in labor camps (reeducation camps) run by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong during and after the war.
There are a number of pieces of unexploded ordnance stored in the corner of the yard, seemingly with their charges and/or fuses removed.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Remnants_Museum_(Ho_Chi_Minh_City)]
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small plastix box with logbook and pancil
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