Thousands of Vietnamese celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War on Wednesday, in what the country’s communist leader said was a “victory of faith”.

Celebrations culminated in a grand parade in Ho Chi Minh City with thousands of marching troops and an air show featuring Russian-made fighter jets and helicopters, as Vietnamese waved red flags and sang patriotic songs.

The historic anniversary commemorates the first act of the country’s reunification on April 30, 1975 when Communist-run North Vietnam seized Saigon, the capital of the US-backed South, renamed Ho Chi Minh City shortly after the war in honour of the North’s founding leader.

“It was a victory of faith,” and also of “justice over tyranny,” To Lam, Vietnam’s Communist party chief and the country’s top leader, said on Wednesday, citing one of Ho Chi Minh’s mottos: “Vietnam is one, the Vietnamese people are one. Rivers may dry up, mountains may erode, but that truth will never change.”

The fall of Saigon, about two years after Washington withdrew its last combat troops from the country, marked the end of a 20-year conflict that killed some 3 million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 Americans, many of them young soldiers conscripted into the military.

“Communist troops rolled into the South Vietnamese capital virtually unopposed, to the great relief of the population which had feared a bloody last-minute battle,” said a cable from one of the Reuters reporters in the city on the day it fell.

The cable described the victorious army as made up of “formidably armed” troops in jungle green fatigues but also of barefoot teenagers.

Those events were seared into many memories by the images of US helicopters evacuating some 7,000 people, many of them Vietnamese, as North Vietnamese tanks closed in. The final flight took off from the roof of the US embassy at 7:53 a.m. on April 30, carrying the last US Marines out of Saigon.

The formal reunification of Vietnam was completed a year later, 22 years after the country had been split in two following the end of French colonial rule.

VIETNAM-US TIES

Vietnam and the United States normalised diplomatic relations in 1995 and deepened ties in 2023 during a visit to Hanoi by former US President Joe Biden.

“The United States and Vietnam have a robust bilateral relationship that we are committed to deepening and broadening,” a spokesperson for the US Mission in Vietnam said on Wednesday.

That bond is however now being tested by the threat of crippling 46% tariffs on Vietnamese goods that Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, announced in April.

The tariffs have been largely paused until July and talks are underway. But if confirmed, they could undermine Vietnam’s export-led growth that has attracted large foreign investments.

Washington sent Susan Burns, its consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, to represent the country at the parade.

At the celebrations for the 40th anniversary no US official was present.

France, which also lost a war in Vietnam, sent a minister to last year’s celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, when French colonial rule collapsed.

While Hanoi has re-established relations with the United States, it has maintained close ties with Russia, which is its top supplier of weapons.

Vietnam has also nurtured closer relations with northern neighbour China despite a complex history involving several conflicts and a rivalry in the disputed South China Sea.

China is now a major investor in its economy and the source of many of the components that are used in products that are then exported to the US

Underlining the warming ties, a contingent of 118 Chinese troops was expected to march alongside Vietnamese soldiers and policemen “to honour the international support Vietnam received during its struggle for independence,” according to state media.