The exhibition comprises 125 photos, 22 documents and 243 artefacts that reveal the lingering consequences of the atrocities committed by the U.S. during its war of aggression against Vietnam and its people.
The 1776 the U.S. Declaration of Independence read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
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But when the U.S. waged a war of aggression in Vietnam, its armed forces trampled on these principles as well as international laws by systematically capturing, torturing, raping, and killing civilian populations and prisoners of war, and even perpetrating massacres like the killing of 504 civilians in Son My, Quang Ngai, in 1968. They used weapons prohibited by international conventions like steel-pellet bombs, phosphorus bombs and toxic chemicals, especially Agent Orange. In November 1965, Curtis Lemay, Commander of the Strategic Air Command, unequivocally announced the U.S. would "bomb them (the North Vietnamese) back into the Stone Age."
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Vietnamese patriots taken by U.S. Marines in November 1965, are roped together and led toward an interrogation camp. Many Vietnamese suffered oppression during wartime.
The war was over but had left three million dead (including two million civilians), roughly two million injured and 300,000 missing besides causing massive destruction of infrastructure in both the North and South.
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A little girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc (centre) was terribly burnt by U.S. napalm (Trang Bang, Tay Ninh, 1972).