War Remnants Museum

The War Remnants Museum (Vietnamese: Bảo tàng chứng tích chiến tranh) is a war museum at 28 Vo Van Tan, in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. It primarily contains exhibits relating to the Vietnam War, but also includes many exhibits relating to the first Indochina War involving the French colonialists.

History

Operated by the Vietnamese government, an earlier version of this museum opened on September 4, 1975, as the "Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes" (Vietnamese: Nhà trưng bày tội ác Mỹ-ngụy), located in the premises of the former United States Information Agency building. The exhibition was not the first of its kind for the North Vietnamese side, but rather followed a tradition of such exhibitions exposing war crimes, first those of the French and then those of the Americans, who had operated at various locations of the country as early as 1954.

In 1990, the name was changed to Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression (Nhà trưng bày tội ác chiến tranh xâm lược), dropping both "U.S." and "Puppet." In 1995, following the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States and end of the US embargo a year before, the references to "war crimes" and "aggression" were dropped from the museum's title as well; it became the "War Remnants Museum" (Bảo tàng Chứng tích chiến tranh).