Operated by the Ho Chi Minh City government, an earlier version of this museum opened on September 4, 1975, as the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes[1] (Vietnamese: Nhà trưng bày tội ác Mỹ-ngụy).

Other exhibits include graphic photography,[7] accompanied by a short text in English, Vietnamese and Japanese, covering the effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliant sprays, the use of napalm and phosphorus bombs, and war atrocities such as the My Lai massacre.

Curiosities include a guillotine used by the French and South Vietnamese to execute prisoners,[7] the last time being in 1960, and three jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds, contained in the defoliant Agent Orange.

From fall 2014 to spring 2015 Agent Orange: Messages from the Heart, a collection of photos featuring thriving survivors of war, signaled a departure from the museum's abrasive tone towards a more reconciliatory one,[8] in line with its trajectory since the mid-1990s.

[2] An analysis of the impression books (which the tourists may use to leave their comments in at the exit) revealed that the museum's visitors used to be mostly Europeans and North Americans before 2005, but that its audience became much more varied after Vietnam dropped their visa requirement for ASEAN countries that year.