This was one of the few places I wanted to see, simply to see if it was true that the Vietnamese government would actually put up a memorial of sorts denouncing the U.S. presence during the Vietnam War. The War Crimes Exhibition, formerly the "Museum of American War Crimes", has been changed so as not to offend Yank tourists. This was a grisly place and I don't recommend it for the faint of heart. The brochure we received here was entitled "Some Pictures of U.S. Imperialists Aggressive War Crimes in Vietnam".
The exhibits ranged from a mannequin of an American soldier stomping on a traditional rice basket with a burning village in the background to jars filled with pickled deformed fetuses which had been exposed to Agent Orange. There are different rooms in the museum; in one there's a framed piece of black velour with several military decorations pinned to it under glass. The legend, written by a former U.S. Air Force major, simply says: "We were wrong. I'm sorry." I was drawn to a newspaper article in particular, that was prominently displayed on a wall. It pictured and referred to an U.S. Air Force captain who had refused to drop his B-52 bombs over Hanoi during the Rolling Thunder campaign. The Vietnamese communist hyped this heavily as part of their propaganda against the other Americans during the war. More traditional remnants of the War were scattered in a somewhat organized fashion over a two square acre courtyard, including tanks, fighter jets, turrets off of personnel carriers and other sundry remnants.