The victory of the Vietnamese should have been an occasion for celebration for the majority of Americans who had come to oppose the Vietnam War, but American defeat doesn't seem to have brought much joy to anti-war & even leftist Americans. Why no celebration? The majority of the Japanese, at the end of World War 2, experienced _such a tremendous sense of relief_ that it bordered on outright rejoicing (or that's the impression that I have gotten from reading memoirs, stories, etc. about the war), even though there was no strong anti-war movement during the war. Americans, in contrast, had more reasons to rejoice at the end of the Vietnam War than the Japanese did at the end of World War 2; most importantly, Americans could have taken pride in the strength of the anti-war movement -- especially movements of G.I.s & veterans against the war -- one of the high points of American history. There should have been a movement to build a national monument to celebrate the Vietnam Veterans against the War, a historical museum to commemorate the anti-war movement, and so on.
Yoshie