Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Few livingpeople witnessed the carnage and destruction of the US bombing of Hanoi inDecember 1972. But those who were there remember it clearly.

There is a monument for victims of thebombing on Kham Thien Street. At its centre stands a woman with a child in herarms. The child lies still, motionless as the woman appears to take a stepforward with a blank expression on her face.

The street was one of the capital city’searliest and busiest streets. It was so well-known for its many tailor shopsand "geisha style" parlours during French colonial times thatHanoians used to refer to it simply as “the street of tailors or the street ofgeishas”. There was not a target of strategic value to American bombers in thevicinity.

It is hard to imagine that this peaceful andbusy street was the site where one of the most hideous and brutal war crimesduring the long American war in Vietnam took place. On the night of December26, 1972, almost the entire street was laid to waste by American B-52 bombers.Two hundred and eighty-seven civilians were killed and 290 severely wounded. Ofthe ward’s 30,000 residents, eight thousand became homeless over just an hour.

The heavy casualty was no coincident. Priorto the bombing families were evacuated to the countryside. They only returnedbecause they believed a large scale attack was highly unlikely duringChristmas. “It’s the season of mercy they say,” people reassured each other.


Wrong they were. That night some lost theirparents, some lost their brothers and sisters, some their children. Almosteveryone lost someone dear to them that night. There were even families with nosurvivors.

“I was working my late shift that night. Bythe time I got back the street was in ruins. There was nothing but fire andwreckage. People were crying and calling out for their loved ones in the dark.I lost my family that night,” said Nguyen Van Cau, 76, a local resident.

During the entire duration of OperationLinebackers II, which commenced on December 18t and lasted until December 29,American aircraft dropped some 20,000 tonnes of bombs on major northern citiesincluding Hanoi and Hai Phong, killing thousands of civilians and destroyingmuch of the region’s infrastructure.

The operation remains one of the largestair raids ever carried out by the US Air Force. It was later explained as aneffort to bring the North back to peace negotiations, which were in astalemate, by Nixon administration. However, many historians believed that thebombing had little to no impact as no major changes were added to the historicParis Peace Accords, which ended American direct military combat in Vietnam,signed in early 1973.

The capital’s Kham Thien Street is nowknown by another name by the capital residents, “B-52 Street”, a sad reminderof its residents’ tragic fate. Local residents now gather at the monument everyyear on December 26 to mourn their dead. Among them are Cau and his neighbours,now with much grey in their hair, still bearing witness to the horror anddestruction of a war that ended almost half a century ago. - VNA