Ho Chi Minh City's authorities held a ceremony on August 2 to posthumously confer the State's noble title of “Heroic Vietnamese Mother” to five women whose husbands and children laid down their lives in the struggle for national liberation, construction and protection.

Also at the ceremony, the title of “Hero of the People's Armed Forces” was posthumously bestowed upon Phan Van Han (alias Hai Sang), a martyr who sacrificed during the Mau Than General Offensive and Uprising in spring 1968. Han joined revolutionary activities at the age of 15 and went through two resistance wars in many different positions from a liaison officer to a district-level official.

Speaking at the ceremony, Politburo member and Secretary of the municipal Party Committee Nguyen Van Nen stressed that the Vietnamese Party, State and people always remember the noble sacrifices of heroes and martyrs and the great contributions of heroic mothers.

The official requested local sectors, authorities, and people pay more attention to caring for alive heroic mothers and to the education of younger generations on their duties in response to the nation’s revolutionary history.

After two wars, Vietnam recorded more than 1.146 million fallen heroes, 172,000 heroic mothers, and 800,000 wounded and sick soldiers. HCM City is home to 5,470 heroic mothers, of whom 108 are still alive./.