Two days before our July 4 celebration marked the 50th anniversary of the formal reunification of Vietnam into a single country. The war had ended the previous year, in April, 1975, when North Vietnamese army tanks rolled onto the palace grounds in South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon. Surrender time. During the 14-month period of reunification, to rub it in, the name Saigon got removed with a red eraser. Not liberation and not independence. The new name on July 2, 1976, Ho Chi Minh City.
All of us who went off to war in the late ’60s and early ’70s remember the name Ho Chi Minh, the dictator of North Vietnam. Few Vietnam vets, if any, remember or have ever heard the name To Lam, but he is now the top dog in ‘Nam, the Communist Party’s General Secretary. Fifty years has brought a lot of change to Vietnam, but most startling is To Lam’s and the CP’s embrace of capitalism.
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This is part of To Lam’s drive to present Vietnam as an important regional actor in Southeast Asia. Vietnam has emerged as a hub of global manufacturing. The United States is the biggest market for Vietnamese exports: Container communism from Da Nang and other ports supplies us with one-third of our shoes, one-fourth of our furniture, and one-fifth of our clothes. Despite bickering over tariffs, both countries seek a bilateral trade agreement.
While the North’s crushing of the South a half-century ago unified Vietnam and made it more formidable, during these same years, international communism pretty much went kaput, save for the occasional holdouts like Cuba, North Korea and the faculty lounge at elite universities in Boston and Paris along with the recent victories of softer but just as dangerous Democratic socialists in New York City, Seattle, and Colorado. Like any shrewd communist leader in the 21st century, To Lam is keenly aware that Marxist ideology is toast. But he keeps that insight on the down-low, while jumping on President Donald Trump’s “Art of the Deal.”
The Big Beautiful Bewildering Blueprint at the moment for To Lam is the Trump Organization’s deal to build a $1.5 billion riverside resort outside Hanoi. The development will include a five-star hotel, private villas for guests, a clubhouse, and two championship golf courses.
Better the sound of exploding bombs in the rice fields replaced with the sound of To Lam’s running dog capitalist cash register, but not without its own difficulties. Some of the local farmers living near the project about to get displaced don’t think the compensation for taking over their land is worth it. “The whole village is worried about this project,” one farmer told Reuters wire service, “because it will take our land and leave us jobless.” Worse still, construction on the project has forced many families in the area to exhume ancestral graves and relocate the remains of their dead relatives.
The golf resort was supposed to open next year, but the grave removal controversy has pushed back the deadline. To Lam’s desire to monetize Vietnam will be welcomed by one small elite group: golfers. Out of a population of 100 million, there are about 70 golf courses in Vietnam catering to at most 100,000 putter enthusiasts. Welcome to the Proletarian Paradise.
When I’m relaxing in the morning, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, my attention is captured by big news stories from Vietnam, such as a Trump hotel rising in the sky about 40 kilometers down the road from the former American POW camp dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton.” And more. As I look back on all these years from Ho to To, what stands out more than anything is this: Since I returned home from the war all those years ago, I don’t believe there has ever been a single day in my life without a passing thought of Vietnam. A story in the newspaper, a flash across the TV screen, pho soup in Little Saigon, the tri-colored bumper sticker on the car in front of me, or a ride with the taxi driver from Da Nang who lives on the Oregon Coast where I now live.
Or the Coast Guard helicopter turning in the wind. Or the police chopper. Or the ambulance chopper. Doesn’t matter. There is a rippling, thumping sound of rotor blades, a Huey with a door gunner blasting away, 500 rounds per minute off his machine gun. That’s in my head. And in my hand, a book, my just-published memoir as a photographer in the 3rd Marine Division snapping pics of the war from Da Nang to the DMZ.
Bob Armstrong is the author of No Exit from Vietnam, Pen & Sword Books, and a contributing writer to Thursday Review, an online magazine covering politics and culture.
