Vietnamese Restaurant Owner Prays for Peace in War-Era ‘Secret Base’; Noodle Shop That Once Sheltered Viet Cong Now Serves as Museum

By Shunpei Takeuchi / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

15:44 JST, May 5, 2025

HO CHI MINH CITY — In a noodle restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, proprietor Ngo Van Lap, 66, marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War on April 30 with a prayer for peace.

The restaurant is an appropriate setting for such a prayer, as it used to be a “secret base” for resistance soldiers.

“I hope the current peace will last forever,” Lap said.

The restaurant is in the central part of the city, which was called Saigon during the war years and the capital of South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam.

One room in the building was secretly used by the pro-communism National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, commonly known as the Viet Cong.

Lap’s father, Ngo Toai, opened the restaurant after immigrating to the city from northern Vietnam, which was occupied by France at the time. In 1967, the restaurant began to be operated as a base for the Viet Cong. Lap, who was a child at the time, worked in the restaurant.

Sometimes, people would ask for animal parts that the restaurant did not usually serve, like “cow’s tail.” These orders were actually secret passwords indicating that the customer was a Viet Cong soldier. Lap was in charge of guiding the soldiers to a waiting room on the second floor.

During the Lunar New Year period in January 1968, military forces belonging to North Vietnam, officially called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, conducted a series of surprise attacks, known as the Tet Offensive, against many locations in South Vietnam.

During the offensive, Lap’s father was detained and tortured on suspicion of having cooperated with the Viet Cong, and two Viet Cong soldiers were shot to death on the roof of the restaurant.

“I still wake up in the middle of the night with memories of those days going through my head,” Lap said.

Toai was released from detention in 1973 after U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam, and he, Lap and other members of their family went to live in a forest near Saigon. Even after the American troops had left, civil war continued between the North and the South. All the while, Lap’s family remained in hiding.

On April 30, 1975, Lap could not hold back his tears when he heard that Saigon had fallen into the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Later, Lap succeeded his father as the restaurant’s proprietor. The waiting room on the second floor that had been used as a base of resistance against U.S. forces has been refurbished and converted into a museum. Now, many tourists, including Americans, come to visit.

Recalling his early life, when he was surrounded by war, Lap said, “I want to talk about what happened in this building so that the story can be passed down to future generations.”