Randa Abdel-Fattah

is in Washington, D.C.

I've been there many times.

It's down by the National Mall, and it's this beautiful, massively long black granite wall designed by the architect Maya Lin.

The War Remnants Museum is in Ho Chi Minh City, the city formerly known as Saigon.

It was originally called the Exhibition House for U.S.

and Puppet Crimes back when it was founded in 1975, but the name was eventually changed as relations improved with the U.S.

Over half a million people visit the museum each year, most of them tourists.

Still, it's criticized for lacking balance in its focus on atrocities committed by the U.S.

compared to the North Vietnamese.

This bias is also seen in some memorials in other parts of Vietnam, like the Can Son Island prison complex.

There you walk through the prison and see statues of Vietnamese people being tortured by Americans, whether it's a depiction of someone locked in a small cell or being beaten with sticks and fists.

The message is clear that the Vietnamese were victims of American cruelty.

You can see this in the museum guest books, where visitors write down reflections of their visits.

It's a challenging concept, one with huge implications for national identity, both Vietnamese and American.

It feels like there's something really powerful about war memory because it has the capacity on the one hand to like to unite a country.

Right.

Because when you have a common enemy, it's somewhat the kind of easiest way to unite people is to say, here's a common enemy.

But as we know, with the Vietnam War, it was also incredibly divisive.

Right.

For it was almost like our country had a split brain.