
The Cu Chi Tunnels
Cu Chi is a province northwest of Saigon where villagers dug an underground tunnel network that eventually ran roughly 200 kilometers, hand carved with hoes, baskets, and other crude tools. The system began during the French colonial period and was expanded by the Viet Minh, then again by the Viet Cong once American bombing started leveling the villages above. Footage and photographs shot by Eugene Taylor and Abraham Krikorian during a November 2013 visit take the camera through the narrow, low-ceilinged passages that once held kitchens, sleeping quarters, hospitals, and command posts, all built to keep fighters and civilians alive underground for years at a stretch. There is no narrator walking through political context or battle history here, just a direct look at the physical engineering: how deep the tunnels run, how tight the crawl spaces are, and how much labor it took to build a hidden second village beneath the one that kept getting bombed.