Why many people in Vietnam now have a positive view of Americans 50 years after the war

Sky News

30-04-2025

On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, it's a sea of red.
The streets are filled with national flags and thousands of troops and civilians smiling widely in patriotic dress.
Some people have camped out overnight to make sure they get the early morning display of military might-fighter jets and helicopters decorating the skies above.
50 years after the unification of Vietnam, this is a celebration of national pride, revolutionary heroism and victory against the odds.
At the statue of former North Vietnam president Ho Chi Minh, we meet Nguyen Ngoc Xuan Mai. She's beaming.
"We have so much joy," she tells me. "We celebrate it together. I feel so grateful because [of] what my ancestors did in the past. So that we can have today."
The legacy of the Vietnam war - a bloody battle between communist North and US-backed South Vietnam - is a complex one.
Around three million Vietnamese lost their lives and about 58,000 Americans.
It exposed the limits of American military power and in the US there was huge backlash.
The psychological scars on both sides were profound and it altered the political landscape.
The impact of Agent Orange, a notorious chemical defoliant used by US forces over Vietnam to destroy jungles is still being deeply felt.
It was a hugely toxic defoliant and from the 1960s onwards, doctors saw a sharp rise in birth defects and cancers.
Decades later, those victims are still suffering and now they have the added worry of a possible cut in US funding to help with their medical needs.
And yet, on the streets of the city that was renamed from Saigon after the US departed, it is not an anti-American feeling you sense.
Far from it in fact.
Despite their history, many Vietnamese have a positive view of Americans - they see them as forward-looking.
Part of that is the cultural exchange and economic benefits they have felt from normalised relationships and the high number of products Vietnam exports to America.
A defining and iconic image of the Vietnam War was taken by Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Nick Ut.
It shows a nine-year-old girl running naked on a road after being severely burned in a napalm attack by the South Vietnamese Air Force.
Mr Ut has returned to Ho Chi Minh City. He tells me he stills speaks to that girl, now a woman, every week.
She's called Kim and she lives in Toronto. "I feel like I took that picture yesterday," he tells me. "I always think about that day in the village and the victim, the little girl. She's like a daughter to me."
In his first term, Donald Trump invited Mr Ut to the White House. He tells me the president held up a framed copy of the photograph to a packed room and said: "This man's image stopped the war."
It certainly became a powerful symbol of the war, influencing global public opinion and anti-war movements.
Now in his second term, Mr Trump is threatening Vietnam with 46% tariffs - which would be ruinous to the Vietnamese economy.
But Mr Ut says he's hopeful the relationship will endure. He believes the US remains a "good friend".