Today, Nguyen Tuyet Van, director of the renamed War Remnants Museum, giggles when asked about the old captions. We use the explanations provided by the Western photographers. Indeed, most of the exhibit about the U.S. massacre of civilians at My Lai was taken from a 1969 article in Life magazine. Along with pictures of dead civilians, decapitated soldiers, and napalmed villages, it features a jar filled with the embalmed remains of a deformed baby, allegedly poisoned by the defoliant Agent Orange. But the captions, for the most part, are straightforward, and a new section is dedicated to the U.S. antiwar movement.
Historians also teach a more nuanced view of American motives.
Now, I tell my students that the main reason the U.S. government wanted to invade Vietnam was under its global strategy against communism. This revision reflects some self-interest. Vietnam needs American investment, especially with the rest of Asia mired in economic crisis. We still write about the war, but we try to find things to serve our two countries. Desire for foreign investment, however, cannot explain the change in popular novels.