How do Vietnamese people have such favorable views of the USA after what they did to them?

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/06/23/1-americas-global-image/

America’s image is mostly positive among the Asian nations polled. Particularly large majorities see the U.S. favorably in the Philippines (92%), South Korea (84%) and Vietnam (77%).

It's from 2015 but more recent polls have found similar data IIRC

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/comparing-global-views-of-the-united-states-and-china-during-the-trump-and-biden-administrations/

79% of people polled in Vietnam chose the US in the "Preferred alignment choice in U.S.-China rivalry" which is a different metric obviously but still points towards the same idea

Edit: According to Luna Oi, Pew Research Center is a neoliberal think tank that cannot be trusted on anything about Vietnam

https://youtu.be/hPCoDz_CPCc

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I'd go with Luna on the matter. Neolibs have no shame in extrapolating the most insane shit from not remotely related questions.

As a Vietnamese I would go with Luna explain that the questions were most likely biased and the results were pulled out from the ass of a hardcore liberal.
However, the PRC wasn't on friendly term with Vietnam after the Sino Soviet split. Alongside border skirmishes and proxy war with China in Cambodia, Vietnamese people felt pretty betrayed when China normalize relationship with the USA and developed so fast while we were still under sanctioned by the US and have no more helps when the ussr collapsed. Furthermore, the South China Sea dispute have certainly been an issue that keeps flashing up the resentments from before and made many Vietnam have a much lower opinion about China and Chinese people.
To modern Vietnamese, the USA is the far away enemy of our next door frienemy which makes them a good opportunistic Ally on paper. Furthermore, America's propaganda is so much better than anyone else, which makes a lot of people even in Vietnam have some false images of the USA. At least they don't have as much propaganda from China to improve their reputation, yet

One thing I wonder is if there is still pro-South Vietnam people in Vietnam like there is pro-Confederate people in the US. Is there anyone here from Vietnam who can chime in if that's a thing over there?
- I'm from Vietnam but I migrated to America in early 2010s for work. I can only tell you what I known from back then. There was no openly pro south Vietnam people in Vietnam. If those kinda people even dare to show their true color i.e. display the flag or openly call for the revival for South Vietnam, they would've been shut down really fast and have an express line to jail for reeducation purposes.
  That doesn't mean that those people don't talk anonymously online or behind closed doors though. The economic problems in Vietnam after the war also didn't help with building confidence in people who was directly benefited from the southern government. In fact many older South Vietnamese still have a rosy colored picture of the puppet regime. But at least those people are dying out and with them any passion for that fascist regime.
- This is an excellent fucking point. Pro-Confederate opinions are still strong 150 years later.
  
  For a lot of really stupid reasons. The US didn't execute enough traitors, these traitors wrote lots of books glamorizing their war exploits, entire organizations sprang up to spread the propaganda for decades on...

(Speaking to your edit: yeah, I was/am hoping that these Pew & Brookings polls of Vietnamese sentiment are simply bad & wrong.)

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