I grew up watching a battalion of Vietnam War movies and television shows—from Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and even Chuck Norris's Missing in Action series. I had forever associated Vietnam with that brutal part of its history. Fast forward to today, I see the city of Ho Chi Minh as a country miles away from that bloody image of Saigon during the war. The peacetime version has disengaged my mind from its former image. Better yet, because the end of the Vietnam War happened almost thirty-seven years ago. It was on the day of April 30, 1975, when a tank belonging to the North Vietnamese Army came crashing through the gates of what was then known as the Independence Palace. The ensuing short battle paved the way for the Fall of Saigon, thereby putting the control of all of Vietnam into the hands of the communist North Vietnamese forces.
Reunification Palace: Last Bastion of South Vietnam
The Crucial Shift of April 1975
It was eerie looking out from the second-floor balcony and looking at that same gate more than twenty-five years after it happened. From where I stood, I could see the bright green lawn and the center fountain. People walking and riding their motorcycles passed by peacefully without having to worry about getting mowed down by machine-gun fire or stepping onto a landmine. I could not be gladder about the time we were living in then. Displayed on the walls in the underground museum were images of the violent past that had beset the palace—from its construction in 1873, when it was known as Norodom Palace in honor of the then Cambodian King, to the time during World War II when the palace was used by the Japanese as their colonial headquarters.
The palace became one of the centerpieces in the foundation of current Vietnam as it went through various resistances and colonization. After the Japanese surrendered, the country was ruled again by the French until 1954, when the French themselves were driven out after surrendering to the Viet Minh, a communist coalition intent on liberating the country and setting up a communist government. The French left, but not before negotiating a peace accord at the Geneva Convention which divided the country of Vietnam between the communist North Vietnamese and an anti-communist state in South Vietnam. The Norodom Palace and the city of Saigon, as stated in the agreed-upon border of the seventeenth parallel between the two fronts, fell into the jurisdiction of South Vietnam.
From Colonial Roots to Independence
Power struggles ensued in the ongoing quest for the rule of South Vietnam. Questionable referendums and coups d'état were waged in the capital of the Republic of South Vietnam. In 1955, self-declared President Ngo Dinh Diem renamed the Norodom Palace as the Independence Palace. The palace was heavily destroyed during a small rebellion in 1962. The entire palace was ordered leveled by Diem to make way for a new building designed by Vietnamese architect Ngo Viet Thu.
Influenced by feng shui design concepts and a mixture of modern and oriental architecture, the palace finally achieved its own identity that up to this day makes it a compelling and interesting landmark in the city of Ho Chi Minh. President Diem would, however, fail to see the completed palace as he and his volatile adviser and brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated in the coup d'état of 1963. The pictures of the dead brothers, just right after they were killed, are still displayed in both the War Remnants Museum and the small museum located on the ground floor of the Reunification Palace.
The leadership of the Republic of South Vietnam changed hands a few more times after the death of Diem. Military juntas became a norm—just like what the Philippines also experienced during the Cory Aquino years. The palace then became the residence of Nguyen Van Thieu, who served as Chief of State from 1965 to 1967 and President from 1967 until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
We first toured the grounds of the palace, walking around the impressive and large circular front lawn with its water fountain providing its centerpiece attraction. Inside, we saw several former function and meeting rooms where the then President received his official guests. There were also the dining rooms, diplomat's hall, and the President's and his family's bedrooms. A small theater, Presidential office, and other smaller and themed rooms like a 1970s room where all the furniture looked like it had come from that groovy decade.
Exploring the Command Bunker
A sizable courtyard was found within the family quarters; it had a Japanese garden, pool, and miniature water fountains. At the rooftop, it seemed to me, was where the Presidential parties used to be held. It had a surrounding view of the city and a nearby heliport just in case the President needed to escape in a hurry.
What amazed me more was the underground hiding place. It was complete with communications, offices, a mess hall, meeting rooms, and had its own small sleeping quarters for the President and his family. In a volatile country still assuming its identity amidst occasional revolts, plus the fact that the North Vietnamese Army were closing in during the last years of the Vietnam War, a bunker like that was necessary for a last-ditch stand or even a cowardly stand ala Adolf Hitler.
As such with life about all good things coming to an end, the partying and the center of South Vietnam's power came to a crashing halt when the North Vietnamese tanks finally rolled through the white gates of the Independence Palace and soon the city of Saigon fell into the hands of the communists. The palace then became the symbol of the end of the Vietnam War, a war that took the lives of millions of Vietnamese and more than 58,000 American soldiers.
In November 1975, the Independence Palace was yet again renamed, but this time to its current name, the Reunification Palace. The merging of North and South spawned the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a communist regime which then set up its capital in the city of Hanoi.
Once the mighty symbol of the South Vietnam Government, to which former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said should be protected at all cost from the communist North Vietnam forces to avoid what he called a "domino theory" of having countries in Southeast Asia fall to the communist regime one after the other. Well, history has shown us that it was not the case. What happened in Vietnam was an isolated case that only affected their own, and years after the end of the Vietnam War, the country had bounced back to its feet. Learning a terrible lesson from history, we should forever bear in mind what America should have known better at that time: Who are we to tell other nations how to rule themselves?
