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American sentiment toward Germany and Japan is pretty positive, isn't it?
I worked in Vietnam for a while and I encountered almost no anti-American sentiment. One thing I saw at various war memorials and museums that I visited is that they had displays talking about the US draft and war protests, as opposed to just seeing Americans as a monolith. Like, at the My Lai memorial site, there was a tribute to Ronald Ridenhour, the American whistleblower who helped keep it from being swept under the rug. So there's a more nuanced understanding of US participation than just FOREIGN INVADERS. I also met a bunch of American vets who were over there doing service work - apparently it's a fairly common thing, a way for people to sort of supplant traumatic memories with positive ones. I expect that sort of thing also has helped the perception of Americans. As I understand it, the dominant religions (Catholicism and Mahayana Buddhism) also place a pretty high value on forgiveness and altruism, which could also be a contributing factor. Plus, tons of people have friends and relatives in the US.
It's also super frowned upon to be openly rude or inhospitable in Vietnamese culture, so even if someone isn't super fond of the US they don't tend to give aggro to American visitors. It's definitely a friendly place toward tourists, compared to some other countries I have visited.
Every country that has gone to war with the US (win or lose) has profited ! I'm surprised some of the poor countries today don't do it just for that reason .
It's also worth noting that a lot of Vietnamese moved to the US after the war and in the decades since and many of them have found pleasant and successful lives (as is the case with every other Asian country). This also creates a generally positive opinion.
Everyone, the OP is "no longer a member", AKA banned. Interpret that as you will, I take it as he got caught trolling.
Anyways my answer would be that:
1. Vietnam was engaged in almost a constant period of 50 years of warfare in the last century - Japan, France, China, Cambodia, itself. The "American Phase" of this period of warfare was only one portion of it. If they had a low opinion of every country they were at war with, they would have no one left to talk to.
2. Most of the current people living in Vietnam were not alive during the Vietnam War. They have no memory of it and for them it very well could be 1,000 years ago.
3. Some that are still alive in the south were allied with America, many have relatives that managed to escape to America after the war (many were indifferent and suffering equally by both sides).
4. Vietnam now has a healthy economic relationship with the US. They profit from us. They also see China (always have actually) as a regional threat.
Vietnam was at war for 400 years against predominately the world powers of China & France...then the U.S. came in for 10 years or something, and the Vietnamese are proud to say that they won that war, as well as the other wars. Then after they defeated the U.S., they went into Cambodia and removed Pol Pot.
In short, the War with America was SUPER SHORT, and they won it. There is significantly more resentment with China. I think the U.S. has had far more 'needing recovery' from the Vietnam War than Vietnam did.
Perhaps because most of the diaspora is in the U.S.--millions of Vietnamese immigrated to the U.S., whether war-related or not.
There are about 2 million Vietnamese-Americans and Houston is the most popular destination outside of California.
The Chinatown in the Alief neighborhood of Houston is really Little Saigon.
Many people such as my hairdresser, doctor, dentist, and car mechanic are naturalized Vietnamese immigrants. When I go to the hair salon, the hairdressers converse in Vietnamese with each other and I always wonder what they're chatting about. (It would be funny to bring a fluent white "friend" for a haircut.)
In every other continent the opinions would be pretty mixed, but in the Far East the US is very well-regarded. The primary reason is that the screwed-up actions the US has done over the past 2 decades, such as Iraq or Iran or Syria, do not concern us at all (unlike to European countries; though their stance is pretty hypocritical considering how some of them were totally involved in many of those, and the Middle East owes part of its mess to their colonisation in the first place), and has generally been a reliable ally or at least hasn't been bothering anyone with their antics. Throw in the attractions of the US as a cultural powerhouse and the primary immigration destination, it's difficult to paint it in a negative light.
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