As the Vietnam War’s 50th anniversary approaches, families of unaccounted-for Vietnamese veterans are calling on the US for assistance in finding their loved ones.
Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, nearly 200,000 Vietnamese soldiers are still unaccounted for.
The Vietnam War saw thousands of Vietnamese soldiers go missing in action.
To identify these soldiers, the Vietnamese government has established a program to collect DNA samples from families of missing personnel.
The program uses advanced forensic techniques, including DNA analysis and archaeological excavations, to locate and identify remains.
According to official records, over 300 sets of remains have been identified since the program's inception in the '1990s'.
Efforts continue to this day, with a focus on recovering remains from remote areas and improving collaboration between Vietnamese and international experts.
According to official records, over 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers are still listed as missing in action since the 'Vietnam War.'
Many remain unaccounted for due to the conflict's devastating impact on the region.
The US government has acknowledged its responsibility and has continued efforts to recover remains and provide closure for families through joint excavation projects with Vietnamese authorities.
Despite these efforts, many questions surrounding their disappearance persist.
The families of these missing soldiers, many of whom have been searching for their loved ones for decades, are now calling on the U.S. to help find them.
The United States provides significant economic, military, and humanitarian assistance to countries worldwide.
According to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), in 2020, the US committed over $50 billion in foreign aid.
This support helps address global challenges such as poverty, hunger, and conflict.
The US also offers disaster relief, food assistance, and medical aid to those in need.
For Thanh Nguyen, a young woman from Hanoi, her uncle’s disappearance is a personal tragedy that has haunted her family for years. Her uncle, Nguyen Duy Oanh, an army medic, was killed in action in 1972. Despite growing up hearing stories about him from her family, Thanh has never met her uncle and can only imagine what he might have been like.
Thanh’s family has been searching for her uncle’s remains since the war ended, but so far, they have found nothing. The military has issued a notice about Oanh’s death, but all they have are two handwritten letters from him. Thanh hopes that one day she will find her uncle’s remains and be able to burn incense to bid him a proper farewell.
Nguyen Xuan Thang, an architect who has been searching for Vietnamese missing war dead for nearly 20 years, shares Thanh’s frustration. He himself has an uncle who was killed in action in 1968 and is still missing. Thang says that funding is not the biggest challenge, but rather information and witnesses. Many of the people who saw the fighting during the war are now passing away, taking their memories with them.
The problem of identifying the remains of Vietnamese soldiers is complex. Unlike American soldiers, who were issued identification tags, Vietnamese soldiers did not have this system in place. After battles, the bodies of killed soldiers were often gathered and buried together in mass graves. However, even after they were excavated, the identification was difficult due to the lack of resources.
In recent years, a national committee has been established to consolidate and lead the searches for missing Vietnamese soldiers. However, results have been limited due to the lack of resources. The U.S. government has also spent millions of dollars searching for its own missing personnel from the war.
The families of Vietnamese MIAs are now calling on the U.S. to step in and help them find closure. For Thanh Nguyen, this means finding her uncle’s remains and being able to move forward with her life. As she says, ‘The war ended a long time ago, but the pain remains.’
