Vietnam Marks Fall Of Saigon

Floats Bear U.S. Credit Card Logos As Festive Vietnam Looks Forward

(AP) 
"My father and grandfather fought in the war but I was too young. I think my future will be good because they created opportunities for my generation," said Nguyen Thanh Tung, an 18-year-old student.

Along the grand boulevard where communist tanks once rolled, capitalism has taken solid root. Some parade floats, sponsored by Vietnamese banks, sported the logo of American credit card companies. One float featured women pushing shopping carts filled with supermarket goods.

These days, Le Duan Street is home to Diamond Plaza, a glittering, upscale department store where French perfumes and Italian shoes are sold to an emerging urban, middle class. Along the same strip, a French-owned five-star hotel sits across the street from the U.S. consulate.

While Vietnam proudly recalled its victories over both the United States and colonial France, the focus was clearly on the future.

"Through our two resistance (wars) against foreign aggressors, the historical clashes in Saigon will always be in the forefront," President Tran Duc Luong said to cheers from the crowd. He called Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, the country's "economic locomotive."

With the president on the giant reviewing platform was a guest of honor, Raul Castro, the brother and successor to Cuba's longtime leader Fidel Castro who stood by Vietnam's communist regime for decades. Also flanking the leader was Giap, the military mastermind behind the defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu and later, ousting the Americans.

Despite Vietnam's remarkable recovery from the devastation of war, most of its largely agrarian population of 82 million remains poor with per capita income hovering around $550 a year.