The Vietnamese Embassy in the US has stepped up cooperation with US partners in addressing post-war consequences, focusing on mobilising support and resources for Vietnam’s 500-day campaign to search for, recover and identify the remains of fallen Vietnamese soldiers nationwide.
Addressing a dialogue on war legacies in Southeast Asia organised by the Stimson Centre in Washington, D.C on October 21, Vietnamese Ambassador to the US Nguyen Quoc Dung briefed representatives of US government agencies, non-governmental organisations and experts on Vietnam’s efforts to address war consequences, while calling for international support and cooperation in urgent humanitarian work.
He said Vietnam has consistently cooperated fully and in good faith with the US in seeking information on missing US servicemen and remained committed to this humanitarian mission. Vietnam is also pursuing the national 500-day campaign, launched in April, to search for, collect and identify the remains of fallen Vietnamese soldiers.
Under the campaign, Vietnam has mobilised unprecedented resources, aiming to recover around 7,000 sets of remains. Efforts are also being intensified to match DNA samples through a centralised database of martyrs’ relatives, and clear unexploded ordnance left over from the war in key former battlefields.
The diplomat said that time is becoming critical in the search for fallen soldiers as former battlefields have increasingly been transformed into residential areas, roads, farms and industrial zones, erasing physical traces. Meanwhile, veterans and witnesses are ageing, narrowing opportunities to collect firsthand accounts. Achieving the campaign’s goals requires combining Vietnam’s field records and oral histories with US wartime archives, forensic anthropology and advanced DNA technology.
Dung said Vietnamese experts will partner with those from Texas Tech University to return to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)’s facility in College Park, Maryland, in the coming weeks to continue examining roughly 2-3 million pages of wartime archives that may contain clues to fallen Vietnamese soldiers, including coordinates in military reports, temporary burial sites, troop movements, old maps and aerial photographs.
He noted that universities, veterans, historians, archivists and technology experts could all make meaningful contributions. Artificial intelligence (AI) could help search and cross-reference millions of pages of documents, but could not replace human memory. Technology must therefore be combined with eyewitness accounts, and action is needed now.
Reflecting on past progress, the ambassador affirmed that cooperation in addressing war legacies had played a pivotal role in transforming Vietnam-US relations into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the diplomat said, adding that the most profound results were reflected in children being able to attend school safely, people with disabilities gaining greater independence, and families finally welcoming loved ones home after decades of waiting.
Earlier, on October 19, Dung discussed the objectives and significance of the campaign and Vietnam’s cooperation with US partners with lecturers and students from the University of Georgia in Washington, D.C.
The university is an active partner in training on remote-sensing technologies to locate suspected burial sites, environmental DNA research, field sampling methods, and the analysis of commingled remains. It is also helping advance the establishment of a joint research and working group for a DNA laboratory in Hanoi.
According to the diplomat, Vietnam has been working closely with US partners to examine NARA archives, including clues to mass graves. The US’s cooperation in sharing military operational data and providing DNA identification technologies was not only an expression of responsibility but also a profound gesture of reconciliation, demonstrating how the two countries could overcome historical legacies through mutual respect and empathy.
