Commentary 26/07/29 When does war truly end?

[성기화 요셉]

More than 50 years after the Vietnam War ended, the nation is still searching for soldiers who never returned

Families pray at the graves of their relatives at an official cemetery in Hanoi in this file photo. Vietnam estimates that hundreds of thousands of soldiers remain missing or lie in unidentified graves decades after the Vietnam War. (Photo: AFP)

By Alex Hoang

Published: July 29, 2026 12:39 PM GMT

Updated: July 29, 2026 12:40 PM GMT

The Vietnam War officially ended on April 30, 1975.

But on a July morning this year, workers in Ho Chi Minh City were still digging for its dead.

The excavation took place at Le Thi Rieng Park, a busy public space where children play and elderly residents exercise. Using ground-penetrating radar, specialists uncovered human remains, military equipment and wartime documents believed to date from the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Before 1975, the site formed part of Do Thanh Cemetery, where Vietnamese soldiers killed during the fighting were reportedly buried in mass graves. The cemetery later became a public park, and the exact locations of many graves disappeared beneath an expanding city.

For Ho Chi Minh City, the land had long moved into the future.

For many Vietnamese families, the past remained unfinished.

A country still searching

The discovery at Le Thi Rieng Park is only one chapter in a much larger story.

Vietnam estimates that hundreds of thousands of soldiers remain missing or lie in unidentified graves decades after the war. In late 2025, the government launched a nationwide "500 Days and Nights" campaign to accelerate the search.

By early July this year, authorities had recovered 1,317 sets of remains, including 850 from Cambodia, 174 from Laos and 293 within Vietnam. Investigators had also collected DNA samples from nearly 47,000 graves and more than 93,000 relatives.

Behind those figures are families who have waited for generations.

Vietnamese media recently told the story of a woman who spent more than half a century wondering where the man she loved had been buried. Only after investigators located a wartime burial site did she finally receive an answer.

Her story is extraordinary, but not unusual.

For many families, the question was never whether their loved one had died.

They already knew that.

The question was where.

In Vietnamese culture, a grave is more than a burial place. It gives a family somewhere to burn incense, remember the dead and continue traditions passed down through generations. Recovering remains therefore restores not only a body, but also a name.

The Americans who returned

Some of the most remarkable people involved in this effort once fought on the opposite side.

Richard Magner, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot, now spends hours at the U.S. National Archives in Maryland examining wartime aerial photographs and military records. Frame by frame, he compares old reconnaissance images with today's landscape, searching for clues that might reveal forgotten burial sites.

The photographs have survived the war.

Their purpose has not.

Images once used to guide military operations are now helping families find the missing.

Another veteran, Bob Connor, began his own search after discovering a 1968 aerial photograph of Bien Hoa Air Base. He marked a location where he believed Vietnamese soldiers had been buried and left his contact information online. About ten days later, a Vietnamese veteran contacted him.

Connor then tracked down former American servicemen who had witnessed the burial of Vietnamese soldiers after the Tet Offensive. Their memories, combined with military maps and archival records, helped Vietnamese authorities recover around 80 sets of remains near Bien Hoa Air Base. Together with Magner and other volunteers, their research has also contributed to the recovery of more than 200 remains at the former Loc Ninh Airfield.

For Connor, finding one burial site only strengthened his determination.

"I need to do more. I need to find them. I have to find the next grave."

He first came to Vietnam as a soldier.

He returned as a witness.

A different kind of battlefield

Most of the American veterans helping this effort are now in their seventies or eighties. Every passing year means fading memories, changing landscapes and fewer surviving witnesses.

That is why modern technology has become essential. Ground-penetrating radar, DNA analysis and digital mapping are making searches possible that would have been unimaginable only a decade ago.

Yet for all the advances in forensic science, the work remains profoundly human.

Families are not simply waiting for bones.

They are waiting for a name.

As evening falls, Le Thi Rieng Park returns to its ordinary rhythm. Children run across the grass. Couples stroll beneath the trees. Few would imagine that beneath their feet lie stories hidden for nearly six decades.

Wars are remembered through battles, treaties and victory anniversaries.

Families remember them differently.

They remember empty chairs at dinner tables, photographs kept on household altars and names that were never given a final resting place.

Somewhere inside the U.S. National Archives in Maryland, another reel of wartime reconnaissance film is still waiting to be examined.

Somewhere in Vietnam, another family is still waiting to learn where a son, a husband or a father came to rest.

Between them lie nearly sixty years of history.