On the morning of Oct. 14, Ho Chi Minh City held a memorial service and burial for the remains of 731 martyrs found at Lê Thị Riêng Cultural Park (Hòa Hưng Ward). Thanh Niên wrote that they are martyrs who fell in Tết Mậu Thân 1968; Dân trí said the collection of remains took more than four months. Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Thị Thanh Trà attended the early-morning prayer service, and Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng attended the memorial service and burial (Dân trí, VnExpress). A motorcade carrying the remains traveled from the park to Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery; the expected route was 26 km (Thanh Niên). People stood along the road holding white chrysanthemums, including 4,000 stems brought by a couple from Đà Lạt to give away for free (Thanh Niên, Tuổi Trẻ). Dân trí wrote that martyr Huỳnh Văn Quên is a rare case identified through his belongings, and his wife visited her husband’s grave for the first time.
Remains that lay for nearly sixty years being brought to their resting place is a rare communal event: from leaders attending the ceremony to students, medical staff, artists and ordinary people standing by the road. As in Mr. Quên’s case, a line of information on a belonging can be the chance for a family to find a loved one.
If you wish to pay your respects, follow the city’s announcements on opening hours and traffic around Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery; we have no official announcement on this. If your family has a relative who died or went missing in the Saigon area in 1968, you can contact the local authorities to ask how to provide information; we have no official guidance.
Many see this as a debt of gratitude paid late, and the whole city seeing the remains off shows that memories of the war are still close.
Identification remains hard: Dân trí calls Mr. Quên’s case rare, meaning many families may wait a very long time, or never learn where their relatives’ remains lie.
What is worth following next is how many of the 731 remains can be identified by name and how the city will continue with forensic testing. We do not have this figure from two sources, so we give no number.
Thanh Niên, Dân trí, VnExpress, VnEconomy, VietNamNet, Tuổi Trẻ, Lao Động, Tiền Phong (Oct. 13–14, 2026)
Remains of 731 martyrs of Tết Mậu Thân 1968 given memorial service and reburied at Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery; thousands line the route holding white flowers
The ceremony took place on the morning of Oct. 14, starting from Lê Thị Riêng Park; Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng attended, and a candlelight vigil was held the night before.
On the morning of Oct. 14, Ho Chi Minh City held a memorial service and burial for the remains of 731 martyrs found at Lê Thị Riêng Cultural Park, Hòa Hưng Ward. Thanh Niên wrote that these are martyrs who fell in Tết Mậu Thân 1968 and lay in the heart of Saigon for nearly sixty years; Dân trí said the collection of remains took more than four months. In the early morning, Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Thị Thanh Trà, together with leaders of the Ministry of National Defense and the city People’s Committee, attended a prayer service at the park (Dân trí); Tuổi Trẻ noted that the Ho Chi Minh City Buddhist Sangha also held a prayer ritual. On the evening of Oct. 13, the arts program “Khúc tri ân” (Song of Gratitude) lit candles in remembrance at the same place (Dân trí). Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng attended the memorial service and burial (Dân trí, VnExpress’s English edition). After the service, a motorcade carried the remains from the park to Ho Chi Minh City Martyrs’ Cemetery; earlier, Thanh Niên had published an expected route of 26 km, with the first group of vehicles setting off at 8:45 a.m. VnExpress wrote that thousands of people had stood along the road since early morning, holding white chrysanthemums; Dân trí wrote that many sang as the motorcade left the park. By noon, Thanh Niên reported, hundreds of chrysanthemums were still lying on the pavement of Võ Nguyên Giáp Street, where the motorcade had passed.
Around the ceremony were very concrete acts by ordinary people. A couple in Đà Lạt drove more than 300 km carrying 4,000 stems of white chrysanthemums they had grown themselves, to give away for free (Thanh Niên, Tuổi Trẻ); a florist donated 1,000 blooms, and two sisters donated 500 stems (Thanh Niên). Dân trí wrote that students of Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai High School lined Điện Biên Phủ Street and medical staff in white coats laid flowers, while Lao Động wrote that many artists, including People’s Artist Trịnh Kim Chi, Huỳnh Lập and Emoura Phạm, came to pay their respects. Behind the figure of 731 are individual cases. Dân trí told how martyr Huỳnh Văn Quên is a rare case because the belongings found contained enough information to establish his identity, and his wife visited her husband’s grave for the first time. We do not have an overall figure for how many remains have been identified by name, so we do not generalize from this case. The same day, Thanh Niên reported on awards for scientists of Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City in the “500 Days and Nights Campaign” to search for, collect and identify martyrs, while VnExpress ran a piece on a group of lecturers using radar to detect graves; both pieces are about the search work in general, and we do not claim they are directly tied to Lê Thị Riêng.