Vietnam's end of war celebrations to be muted

HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Vietnam commemorates 30 years since "The American War" ended on Saturday, no longer simply exulting in the victory but instead urging people to look to the future. snip

There will be fireworks aplenty and ceremonies in what was once Saigon to mark the time the war ended -- 11 a.m. on April 30, 1975. The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City the next year. snip

But the only military parade is outside the palace where the U.S.-backed Saigon administration made its last stand.

U.S troops, who at their peak in the late 1960s had numbered 500,000, had left Vietnam two years earlier. More than 58,000 U.S. troops and up to two million Vietnamese died in the war.

more