Bình An Cemetery


The Bình An Cemetery is a cemetery in Dĩ An, Bình Dương Province, Vietnam. It was an Army of the Republic of Vietnam military cemetery.
The cemetery was apparently established in 1965, although the earliest graves appear to date from 1968.
The location of the cemetery was marked by a statue on Highway 1 by Vietnamese sculptor, Nguyen Thanh Thu, depicting a weary ARVN soldier seated with his M1 rifle on his lap that would come to be nicknamed Thuong Tiec. The statue stood at the beginning of a ceremonial road leading to a hilltop pagoda accessible by stairs, behind the pagoda was a ceremonial walkway leading into the cemetery with the graves laid out in a series of circles around a circular monument and obelisk.
The cemetery was built to hold a maximum of 30,000 graves and by the time of the Fall of Saigon in April 1975 approximately 16,000 burials had taken place there, with half the graves covered by cement and half simple dirt mounds. By 2009 total burials numbered approximately 12,000.
Following the Fall of Saigon the Thuong Tiec statue was destroyed and access to the cemetery was restricted until 2006 when families were allowed to tend the graves.
In 2015 then United States ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius visited the cemetery.