It’s one of the few photos I have left of my maternal grandfather and his colourful arc in life. He had apparently studied public administration in 1930s France and then returned to southern Vietnam in 1941. The rest of his life is largely a photographic gap, the majority of his photos incinerated when South Vietnam’s impending fate became clear. He was ignominiously blacklisted in 1975 by the incoming communist government, though his lifetime of public service would spare him from the re-education gulag. He would spend the rest of his years in penury, while his children found ways to escape overseas in search of brighter futures.

The communists of today, however, record a very different version of my grandfather. An official 2011 report issued by his home province of Soc Trang in the Mekong Delta documents his achievements in service of the anti-colonial resistance in 1945. He was general secretary of the provincial-level administrative committee for the Viet Minh’s War of Resistance against the French, and also headed the ethnic Khmer committee for the revolutionary authorities.

• Tags: Issue 30, Vietnam, Will Nguyen