PHOTO1: Perhaps the most popular piece of war memorabilia in Vietnam is an imitation GI Zippo lighter. They cost anywhere from five to thirty dollars and bare a variety of images and messages engraved into the casing. The Zippos are worn and scratched to look authentic to the layperson, but few tourists actually leave Vietnam with the real thing. As Christian Appy recounts, “Some of the first customers were children of American GI’s and Vietnamese women. Most of them didn’t know their father’s name and had no documents so they bought Zippos as a kind of birth certificate…hoping it would be evidence enough to let them leave.”

PHOTO 2: The group pictured here are part of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG). MAG is “co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the international agreement that bans antipersonnel landmines.” The United Nations has reported that over 100,000 people have been killed or maimed by landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) since the end of the war with the United States in 1975. Today there remains between 350,000 and 800,000 tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and 3.5 million landmines scattered across Vietnam.

PHOTO 3: The man posed here explained that he lost his arms following the explosion of a land mine when he was a child. He is from the central highlands but now makes a living in Ho Chi Minh city selling bootleg copies of anti-war literature including Robert McNamara’s book, In Retrospect, which is sold at nearly every site where westerners can be found.