‘The first new information we’ve heard in 50 years’

Nearly a half-century after the end of the Vietnam War, more than 200,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain unaccounted for. Finding answers about their fates is a race against the clock for researchers with the Unseen Legacies of the Vietnam War Project.

As the U.S. and Vietnam normalized relations in the 1990s, the countries began to build a relationship around the legacy of the conflict. “The war remains an emotional and painful topic on both sides,” says Tony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School and director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute. “Yet, both countries have been able to turn tragedy into a pillar of trust over the years.”

Vietnam has assisted in the discovery and return of American remains for more than 50 years. The Unseen Legacies of the Vietnam War Project, launched in 2021 with support from the U.S. Department of Defense, is part of the first bilateral effort to identify Vietnamese who were missing and killed in action.

The work of the project is made possible by a captured archive of personal effects taken by U.S. and allied forces from the National Liberation Front, the southern communist forces commonly referred to as Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese soldiers. Seized for their intelligence value, these documents — letters, journals, rosters, certificates, etc. — were collected until the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces in 1973. The archive was declassified in 1979 but remained largely untranslated and unorganized until the Unseen Legacies Project began its work.

“There’s a trove of information waiting to be discovered,” Hai Nguyen, director of the project, said. “Archives make it sound like we’re dealing with ancient history, but time is of the essence. In many cases, we start with captured documents from the war and then rely on further investigations, including insights from living veterans, to truly understand what happened.”

A talented writer who often thought of his daughter

Phan Kế Toại enlisted in the People’s Army of Vietnam in 1959 and journeyed to the south in 1967 — writing in his diary along the way. He often penned missives about his family, father, and brother. He worried that his young daughter wouldn’t remember him.   

On January 1, 1970, a regiment of the Australian army found his diary alongside two dead bodies.

It wasn’t until this year that his writing would resurface when researchers found it in the archive. “We were immediately taken by the vivid and warm words,” recalls Giang Trinh, the Project’s lead researcher. “We were determined to get the diary and any new information back to his family.”

However, the diary proved a challenging case. Aside from the author’s name and his daughter’s name, there was no information about Phan Kế Toại’s family or previous address. The team found their first clue in a letter from a soldier in the same unit. They traced the letter back to the fellow soldier’s family, who in turn pointed them toward an enlistment district. It was there that the team finally found information about Phan Kế Toại’s daughter and wife — both still alive and living in Hanoi.

The inquiry from the Unseen Legacies Project was the first time Phan Kế Toại’s family had heard anything about the circumstances of his death. Today, the family is searching for his remains. They are starting at the location where his diary was found, his likely burial site — now a plum garden.

A foot soldier, waiting to be married

Bùi Văn Thụy carried photos of his family, friends, and fiancée with him on his journey with the People’s Army of Vietnam to the south.

It was in his notebook that the Unseen Legacies research team found information about his hometown. With the assistance of local authorities, the team was able to find his brother and his former fiancée, who is now 75. All these years later, she recalled the affection they had for one another: “We truly loved each other, sincerely, from high school.”

In the years following the war, the letters Bùi Văn Thụy wrote his fiancée and other memorabilia were lost or damaged. The return of his notebook and photos, handed over during a ceremony hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in May, was an emotional moment for the family amid their ongoing search for Bùi Văn Thụy’s gravesite.

A medic marked missing

In 1965, 18-year-old Nguyễn Thị A (whose name is changed to protect her family’s privacy) enlisted in the NLF as a medic. Years later, when she was marked missing in action, there was little hope of determining her fate — that is until Unseen Legacies researchers showed up on her family’s doorstep this past spring.

Nguyễn Thị A wrote in a journal until her final hours — when a fellow soldier picked up the pen and jotted down the date of her death. The diary revealed Nguyễn Thị A’s hometown but little else. When the trail went cold, researchers reached out to a group of local medical division veterans. Two of these veterans, Ba Thanh and Ba Hải, helped the team find the family of Nguyễn Thị A. From there, additional information and another long car ride led to a veteran who served in the same unit and was there when Nguyễn Thị A died.

With verified details about her death, the missing-in-action case came to a close.

A lost diary returned

Many investigations unearth new information or lead to a fallen soldier’s family, but in some rare cases, the Unseen Legacies team reconnects veterans with their personal effects.

When Phan Xuân Diệu lost his diary in combat, he never expected to see it again. However, the hometown information he included in his notes was enough for researchers to track him down. He was reunited with his journal at the May U.S. Embassy ceremony.

The mission continues

To date, Unseen Legacies has developed and provided reports on thousands of fallen soldiers and more than 2,000 potential grave sites to the Department of Defense through the defense attaché office, Hanoi, which works with Vietnam’s National Steering Committee 515 — a group charged with identifying the remains of fallen soldiers. The project has also assisted in returning tens of documents from the archive to families with the support from the U.S. Embassy and DAO in Vietnam.

“We have developed a reliable protocol to gather, analyze, verify, and provide high-value information with a rigorous investigative process in every single report,” said Nguyen. “We know that this new information is often an important step toward healing for families.”

The Unseen Legacies Project is also dedicated to ensuring that the information it uncovers contributes to the history of the war for years to come. The team is creating an archive that will contain scores of new documents, first-hand accounts, and information from the captured documents and other battlefield records, alongside the project’s analysis.

“We take tremendous pride in the role this work plays in providing closure for families,” says Saich. “As a historian, I also know how important it is to expand access to these materials, especially as some stories have been long left out of the narrative of the war.

“We want to bring these hidden stories to light, both for the sake of families and for our collective understanding.”