Hoa said the center preserves a vast collection relating to wounded soldiers, martyrs and cadres deployed to the Southern battlefields (B-zone), including personal files and policy documents that reflect the Party and State’s approach to people with meritorious service over different periods, including records showing President Ho Chi Minh’s special concern for this work.
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Ms. Tran Viet Hoa, Director of the National Archives Center III |
The materials include applications for martyr recognition, files for the granting of the “To quoc ghi cong” (The Fatherland acknowledges the merit) certificate, commendation records, and directives and verification documents from ministries, sectors and localities. They show that martyr recognition had been conducted through a rigorous and multi-level process.
For families and authorities lacking sufficient evidence, the center provides an important source of original State records for comparing and verifying information, she noted.
According to the official, the center manages more than 400 archival fonds with nearly 14,000 meters of shelves of records created by central agencies, ministries, sectors and organizations. The collection covers policies for people with meritorious service, martyr recognition, commendations, military campaigns and battles, battlefield support, and related policy implementation. Files relating to Heroes of the People’s Armed Forces include achievement reports and combat records, most of them in the State Presidential fonds.
She highlighted the center’s collection concerning about 72,000 B-zone cadres, which includes original curricula vitae, personnel forms, Party membership cards, transfer decisions, volunteer applications to go to the South, diaries, letters, photographs, medals and orders. These records form an invaluable source for verifying information about martyrs and their relatives.
Since the 500-day campaign started on March 15, 2026, and at the request of Steering Committee 515 for the search for, recovery, and identification of martyrs' remains, and other agencies, the center has reviewed about 100 paper files and photographic records from the fonds of the National Assembly, the Presidential Office, the Prime Minister’s Office and various ministries and sectors. The review has also covered major campaigns and battles, including the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, the 1968 General Offensive and Uprising, and the 1972 Spring – Summer Campaign, to support identity verification.
As an initial result, the center has provided three sets of documents for Steering Committee 515 for data analysis, including records related to the verification of the identities of martyrs buried in a collective grave at Le Thi Rieng Park in Ho Chi Minh City.
Hoa said every timely piece of information could provide another basis for confirming a martyr’s identity and help fulfil the wishes of families that have waited for decades.
Explaining the management of martyr records, Hoa said the files are organized according to archival principles, meaning by the agency that created them rather than under a separate “martyr” category. Files concerning the granting of the "To quoc ghi cong" certificate are kept in the Prime Minister’s Office or Government Office fonds, while commendation records are preserved in the fonds of relevant authorities. This system enables archivists to locate files quickly and accurately.
Regarding the widely discussed case of martyr Huynh Van Quen, she said that after receiving a verification request concerning relics discovered in a collective grave at Le Thi Rieng Park, center staff searched the archival system and found a relevant file in the Prime Minister’s Office fond in less than 15 minutes.
She said the information was immediately transferred to the Ministry of National Defense for comparison with battle records and other sources. While the final conclusion rests with the competent authorities, locating the original file so quickly provided an important basis for verification. For archivists, every file found is also a source of hope for families seeking information about their relatives lost nearly six decades ago.
The official noted that the center has not yet compiled statistics by individual martyr because records are counted according to archival practice, such as by fonds, shelf length, number of files and number of pages. However, most people officially recognized by the State as martyrs and granted the “To quoc ghi cong” certificate have archival files either at the center or elsewhere in the national archival system.
She stressed the need to build a specialized database of martyr records. Such a system would replace the current manual process of identifying the year of death, locality and decision issuing agency before tracing records through the archives, making searches much faster and more comprehensive, similar to the existing database for B-zone cadre records.
Requests for information increase sharply around Wounded Soldiers and Martyrs’ Day (July 27), Hoa said. In addition to serving readers at the reading room, the center receives requests by email, social media and other online channels. Many families seek B-zone files and keepsakes, martyr information, decisions granting the “To quoc ghi cong” certificate, and records of medals and orders. Even with limited initial information, staff swiftly check and compare records to determine whether relevant files exist, and many families have found information they had sought for years.
On the greatest challenge facing the center, Hoa said that many records remain undigitized, so most searches must still be conducted manually.
Therefore, she said digitization is one of the center’s key priorities. Part of the B-zone cadre collection was digitized in previous years, work is continuing this year, and the center aims to complete the entire task next year. A portion of the martyr-related records has also been digitized although the work is carried out by archival fonds rather than by separating martyr files, making the workload enormous.
She added that technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) can support data processing, but final verification must still be carried out by professional archivists to ensure accuracy and legal validity. Once digitization is completed and a unified database is established, searches will become much faster and more accurate, providing an important foundation for the search for, recovery and identification of martyrs’ remains and for better implementing policies for people with meritorious service.
Source: VNA