Why Is April 30 A Major Holiday in Việt Nam?

In the United States, people celebrate the Fourth of July to celebrate America’s independence from the British Empire. It is usually a big celebration: fireworks, rooftop BBQs, America-themed happy hours and drinks, and the American flag on everyone’s front porch. The best part is that everyone gets the day off from work as a federal holiday.

As someone who has celebrated a lot of July 4ths, nothing prepared me for the celebration of April 30, “Reunification Day” or “Liberation Day,” in Việt Nam. The day is usually coupled with May 1, International Labor Day, which gives people in Việt Nam at least two days off from work (this year, people get a long five-day holiday).

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, and the Vietnamese government has made it an even bigger celebration than usual. There were military and police parades in Sài Gòn – Hồ Chí Minh City, patriotic concerts starring popular Vietnamese singers, and the red-and-yellow national flag, paired with the Communist Party flag,  flown on every street corner.

The scene is puzzling for someone like me, who has not lived in Việt Nam for a long time, but is also curious for some people that I know who are foreign visitors. I talked to a visitor from Hungary, where the sight of the Communist flag is repulsed by almost everyone, from normal citizens to dictator Viktor Orban himself. And it is indeed a curious sight: why does Việt Nam choose to fly the Communist flag on a day that is supposed to be about the creation of a new nation?

Việt Nam’s celebration of April 30 is usually framed as the celebration of independence from foreign rule. But it could be something else as well: a celebration of Việt Nam’s modern national identity, which is indistinguishable from the country’s attachment to Communism. In other words, April 30 is Việt Nam’s reinforcement of the regime’s vision – the modern nation of Việt Nam is not a nation-state, but a party-state.

In the first chapter of “Putin and the Return of History”, BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith wrote: “There are wars that change nothing, and there are wars that change history.” He was referencing the two World Wars as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2021.

In his book, Sixsmith discusses how Russia’s President Vladimir Putin pushes certain historical narratives to justify his war against Ukraine. Borrowing from the historian Eric Hobsbawn, Sixsmith  emphasized that “Nations without a past are contradictions in terms,” explaining how government leaders often use history selectively to advance their political agendas in the present. 

While Sixsmith was discussing Russia and Ukraine, a similar analysis could be applied to Việt Nam. 

The Vietnam War challenges the typical dichotomy of “us versus them” as the two sides – North Việt Nam and South Việt Nam – were both represented by Vietnamese people, each accusing the other of being a puppet of a foreign power.

The North accused the South of being an extended arm of American imperialism, whereas the South accused the North of spreading a Soviet and Chinese Communist agenda. Like the case of Russia and Ukraine, the Vietnam War also exposed differing political visions between a group of people who broadly share the same (or very similar) ethnic heritage, language, and history.

After winning the war, the Communists had to maintain the wartime narrative to justify their one-party rule, portraying the Party as the liberator of Việt Nam. This resulted in a very carefully crafted narrative about liberation and reunification, as we see and hear today from the Communist Party’s propaganda machine.

From their perspective, their South Vietnamese counterparts were nothing but passive victims of political elites who were corrupted and controlled by American foreign aid, even after historians have time and time again demonstrated that the reality is far more complex.

There is a reason why Việt Thanh Nguyễn’s widely popular fictional work “The Sympathizer” and its HBO adaptation are not available in Việt Nam (at least not officially, anyway).

Việt Nam is not ready for a nuanced conversation about the war, about April 30, about the violence and the reeducation camps that followed in the name of reconciliation, about the large Vietnamese diaspora who are unable to move on from 1975 because the current government of their homeland refuses to acknowledge the failures of their reconciliation efforts. 

The current Vietnamese government usually frames April 30 as Việt Nam’s liberation day from U.S. imperialism, or Việt Nam’s reunification day with South Việt Nam being “reunited” with North Việt Nam. That is not the reality of many members of the Vietnamese diaspora, whose country was wiped out of existence, and whose relatives left behind suffered asset seizures or discrimination in the education system and the job market.  

As long as the government suppresses the free and honest discussion of the war, its legacies, and its own failure at reconciling with those on the losing side of the war, April 30 in Việt Nam will forever be what it is right now: an opportunity for people to engage in banal nationalism through wearing the country’s flag and posting on social media, and an opportunity for the Communist Party to remind people that they should be grateful for the Party’s role as the country’s “liberator.”

In a speech to the country, Communist Party General Secretary To Lam said that April 30, as well as national reconciliation, is about “respecting differences.” He said, “All Vietnamese are sons and daughters of this country. All are entitled to live, to work, to pursue happiness and love.”

For the first time since the establishment of Việt Nam’s socialist state, a leader of the Communist Party publicly acknowledged that another respectable perspective on the war exists, departing from the Party’s traditional hard line about how “the other side” is the embodiment of selling out the country to American imperialists.

Việt Nam of today is also not the Việt Nam that was closed off from the world and saddled with bad macroeconomic decisions by the Communist Party after the war. If anything, after the passing of the late General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng, many regarded him as “the last Communist,” as the new generation of the political elite is evidently not as attached to ideology, but cares a lot more about economic development through capitalism.

Nowadays, Việt Nam is indeed becoming more open, even to children of the Vietnamese immigrants who left after the war ended. Saigon, in particular, has become a hub for Vietnamese-American or Vietnamese-European entrepreneurs. Understandably, the new generation of Vietnamese young people is not as fixated on war, regime change, and ideology – what matters now is the fact that the country is seemingly moving in the right economic direction.

However, ignoring the remnants of political discussion about the war would be unwise. After all, it was a war that changed everything – for Việt Nam, for its people, for the people who had to leave, and even for Americans. The only path forward for true reconciliation is open and honest dialogue for all sides. That would require efforts from “the winning side” – the current Vietnamese government and its supporters – to be open to alternative perspectives on the war.