The remains of 731 people believed killed during the 1968 Tet Offensive have been laid to rest in Ho Chi Minh City, nearly six decades after North Vietnamese communist forces launched coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam during the Lunar N... HANOI, Vietnam -- Thousands carrying white flowers lined the roads in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City Wednesday as the remains of 731 people believed to have been killed during the 1968 Tet Offensive were taken for burial nearly six decades after their deaths. Vietnamese Prime Minister Le Minh Hung attended the memorial services at Le Thi Rieng Park, where the remains were recovered from mass graves after over three months of excavations.
They were laid to rest at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery in the city previously known as Saigon. Generations in Vietnam have spent decades searching for loved ones who never returned from war, hoping to recover their remains, give them a proper burial and finally find some measure of closure. The Tet Offensive began on Jan. 31, 1968, when North Vietnamese communist forces launched coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year holiday, known in Vietnam as Tet.
One of the largest campaigns of the Vietnam War, it sparked fierce fighting and heavy casualties, including in the southern capital Saigon, where communist fighters attacked the U.S. Embassy, military installations and government buildings. Although the communist forces suffered a military defeat, the offensive shocked Washington, undermined U.S. public support for the war, and became a turning point in the conflict.
The South Vietnamese government collected the bodies of communist fighters and civilians and buried them in mass graves during and after the fighting, according to Vietnamese government news. The remains at Le Thi Rieng Park, which was previously the site of Do Thanh Cemetery, were discovered during excavations that began on June 23 at the park. Over weeks, excavators painstakingly unearthed bones and fragments, along with weapons, ammunition, military hammocks and personal belongings, said the Vietnamese government’s official news portal.
They discovered a wallet containing a faded military document bearing the name Huynh Van Quen, which helped authorities identify one of the dead as a soldier from the 1st Long An Battalion, a communist unit that fought a fierce seven-day battle at Saigon’s Y-shaped Bridge. Among the mourners was Vo Huy Thinh, 70, who remembered watching bodies being buried there when he was 12. For years, architect Nguyen Xuan Thang pored over photographs from the Vietnam War, searching for clues to the location of the burial site.
A breakthrough came when he found a color photograph taken by an AP photographer on Feb. 12, 1968, with a caption describing three large burial trenches that each contained about 300 bodies, he told state media. The photograph shows two men carrying a body as two others look on. Three boys stand nearby, one of them wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and looking directly at the camera.
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