Vietnam Buries Remains of 731 War Dead Nearly 6 Decades After Tet Offensive

Thousands carrying white flowers lined the roads in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on 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 memorial services at Le Thi Rieng Park, where the remains were recovered from mass graves after more than three months of excavations. They were laid to rest at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery, in the city formerly known as Saigon.

Generations in Vietnam have spent decades searching for loved ones who never returned from the war, hoping to recover their remains, give them a proper burial, and find some measure of closure.

The Tet Offensive began on January 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. The offensive, one of the largest campaigns of the Vietnam War, sparked fierce fighting and heavy casualties, including in 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 Associated Press reported in February 1968 that the "resultant conflict has changed the pattern of the war."

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, previously the site of Do Thanh Cemetery, were discovered during excavations that began on June 23. Over weeks, excavators unearthed bones and fragments, along with weapons, ammunition, military hammocks, and personal belongings, said the Vietnamese government’s official news portal.

Among the recovered items was a wallet containing a faded military document bearing the name Huynh Van Quen, which helped authorities identify one of the deceased 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.

Vo Huy Thinh, 70, a mourner who remembered watching bodies being buried at the site when he was 12, told Vietnamese state media, “The memory of that burial pit has stayed with me.”

Architect Nguyen Xuan Thang spent years poring over photographs from the Vietnam War, searching for clues to the burial site's location. A breakthrough came when he found a color photograph taken by an AP photographer on February 12, 1968, with a caption describing three large burial trenches, each containing about 300 bodies. The photograph showed two men carrying a body as two others looked on, with three boys nearby. A water tower was visible in the background, providing a crucial clue to the site’s location. The image was shot by a French photographer credited as Gautron.

Thang told state media he spent months riding his motorbike through Ho Chi Minh City, comparing old military maps with present-day landmarks, including the water tower. His research was part of an nearly eight-year effort, from November 2018 to May 2026, involving his team and the military, which helped authorities narrow their search to the park.

Investigators worked with researchers, historians, journalists, and witnesses to piece together the location of the mass graves. They examined other wartime photographs, satellite images, military maps, and archival records from Vietnam and abroad, comparing them with field surveys and accounts from people who witnessed the burials, according to the Vietnamese government’s official news portal.

The recovery is part of a nationwide 500-day campaign running through July 2027 to locate and identify approximately 7,000 war dead.

More than half a century after the war ended in 1975, many Vietnamese families are still searching for relatives who never returned home. The remains of about 175,000 Vietnamese soldiers have yet to be recovered, while hundreds of thousands more lie in graves without confirmed identities, according to government figures.

Of the 731 sets of remains recovered in Ho Chi Minh City, 307 were found with personal belongings, according to state media. Most have not yet been identified.

“Due to the harsh conditions of war and the passage of time, we have been unable to identify the names, ages, or hometowns of the majority of the martyrs in this group,” said Nguyen Manh Cuong, who heads the city's war dead identification efforts.

Samples have been sent to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi for DNA testing and comparison with samples from relatives.

Similar memorial and burial ceremonies were scheduled for Thursday in three other parts of Vietnam, with the remains of 93 people to be buried in Tuyen Quang province, 65 in Hai Phong, and 120 in Can Tho.