South Vietnamese want to find and bury their war dead. Why is it so hard?

Hong Tran paused as he recalled a memory that has haunted him for decades, his voice trembling with anger and sorrow. "I can still see their faces — those of my comrades who served alongside me and never came home. They fought, bled, and sacrificed for their country," said the 73-year-old, who fought for South Vietnam in the Vietnam War.

Half a century since the war ended, Mr. Tran and others like him are still fighting to find and bury the remains of their fallen comrades. "They have no graves, no names, it’s like they never existed," he said. The Bien Hoa National Military Cemetery outside Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) was a "sacred place" before 1975, Mr. Tran said, who has lived in Australia for 40 years after fleeing Vietnam as a refugee.

"But after the communists took over, they destroyed it. They smashed the headstones, dug up the graves, and planted trees to cover the land." "Their purpose was clear: to erase us from history." Australian historian Robert Hall, who has assisted the Vietnamese government in finding the graves of North Vietnamese soldiers and returning personal effects found on the battlefield, said time is running out to find the remains of South Vietnamese soldiers.

"After the war, things were very bad. The South Vietnamese military cemeteries were bulldozed by the government," he said. While attitudes have softened and progress has been made, Dr. Hall said "extra sensitivities" make the logistics of finding remains more difficult. Vietnam’s Ambassador to Australia, Pham Hung Tam, said the government allows relatives to restore and relocate the graves of South Vietnamese soldiers in cemeteries such as the Binh An Heart Cemetery (formerly the Bien Hoa National Military Cemetery, now a civilian cemetery).

"Thousands of graves have been restored by relatives, many of them reinforced with cement," Mr. Tam told the ABC. He also added that the cemetery has undergone cleaning and renovations, including the erection of a stone altar. Regarding the broader challenge of finding remains, Mr. Tam said, "The task of locating these individual remains is enormous, challenging, expensive and time-consuming." "Even thousands of patriotic martyrs still remain unaccounted for."

An estimated 165,000 soldiers were sent to "re-education camps" in North Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, according to Columbia University's Dart Center. Mr. Tran, a survivor of one of these camps, described it as a "place of torment" for his South Vietnamese comrades. "Many died from starvation, torture, or disease. They were buried in remote forests and mountains, with no markers on their graves," he said. "Their families have no way to find them, let alone bring them home."

Australian veteran and honorary lecturer at the University of New South Wales Canberra, Dr. Hall, explained that locating the remains of fallen soldiers after the Vietnam War was particularly difficult. "For the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, their remains were often left on the battlefield," he said. "They didn’t have the detailed reports or precise burial locations that we had. In many cases, they would report burial locations in vague terms — such as a rubber plantation or an area covering thousands of acres."

Organizations such as the Vietnamese American Foundation continue to advocate for the return of South Vietnamese soldiers' remains to their families. It has recovered 504 remains so far, with many more still awaiting identification and repatriation. The organization excavated the Lang Da re-education camp cemetery in Yen Bai province in 2010, finding 12 skeletons — 11 of which yielded viable DNA. Archaeologist Julie Martin later wrote in an academic journal that a team excavated the skeletons in a matter of days and unearthed personal items such as ceramic bowls and toothbrushes, despite challenging soil and climate conditions.

But Mr. Tran said the Vietnamese American Foundation’s advocacy work with the U.S. and Vietnamese governments is often slow and arduous. The foundation has proposed rebuilding the Bien Hoa National Military Cemetery, but has seen little progress on the Vietnamese government's side. "We don’t want any fanfare or politics, just a dignified place to rest," Mr. Tran said.

Each year, veterans from the U.S. and Australia return to Vietnam to commemorate their dead. They even attend events marking the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. For Mr. Tran, this compounds the pain of not being able to lay his comrades to rest. "How can the Vietnamese communists claim reconciliation with their former enemies while treating us — people with the same language, skin color, and history — as enemies? It’s a cruelty that a non-Vietnamese person cannot truly understand," he said.

But the Vietnamese embassy's Mr. Tam said overseas Vietnamese, including prominent members of the South Vietnamese regime, have been welcomed back to the country as part of reconciliation efforts. "The Vietnamese government has always considered overseas Vietnamese as an inseparable part of the Vietnamese nation," he said. The rights of overseas Vietnamese, including South Vietnamese, are "equal to the rights of any Vietnamese citizen," he added.

Mr. Tran said finding the missing South Vietnamese soldiers remains the greatest battle he will fight. "We no longer have a government to represent us. We are like dust — everyone wants to sweep us away," he said. "But we won't stop fighting. Those men gave their lives for what they believed in. They deserve to be remembered."