Rice and Revolution

The Great Famine of Vietnam during

the Second World War, 1944-1945

Rijuta Vallishayee
Tessa Delgo

Pacific Atrocities Education

 Rice and Revolution
The Great Famine of Vietnam during
the Second World War, 1944-1945

Written by
Rijuta Vallishayee
and Tessa Delgo

Editor
Stacey Anne Baterina Salinas

Published by Pacific Atrocities Education

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles
and reviews. For information, address Pacific Atrocities Education, 1693
Polk Street #1070, San Francisco, CA 94109.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947766-40-2

E-book ISBN: 978-1-947766-39-6
 Table of Contents

Introduction

The French Colonial Period

French Conquest of the Mekong Delta
The History of the French Conquest of the Red River
Delta and the Delta’s Historical Context
Anti-Colonial Resistance
The Great Depression and Its Effects on Indochina

The Rise of the Communist Movement

The Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement
The Popular Front and the Beginning of the Second World
War
1940: Imperial Japan’s Entry into Indochina Comes to a
Head
1941: The Rice Accords and the Formation of the Viet
Minh

1942: The Intensification of Agricultural Exploitation

1943: The Portents of Famine

The Famine (1944-45)
Examining the Causes and Influences that Led to the
Famine
Geography

About the Allocation of Blame

About the Impact of Natural Disasters and Agricultural

Fallout

The French Role in the Famine

Imperial Japan’s Role

The Consequences and Aftermath

Total Devastation: Statistics of the Estimated Deaths

Moves Towards Independence and the Rise of the Viet
Minh
Conclusion: The Long-Term Effects and Legacy of the
1944-45 Vietnam Famine

Notes

Bibliography
 Introduction

The word for “country” in Vietnamese is đất nước, literally “land and
water.” This is no descriptive coincidence. Land and water are the two
components necessary for the cultivation of wet rice, Vietnam’s staple crop.
The two main regions of Vietnamese settlement surround rivers, where land
and water come together to form the perfect conditions for rice cultivation.
Đất nước may have originally referred to inland water systems like the Red
River and the Mekong River, and the interplay between the land and salt
water, specifically considering Vietnam’s proximity to the strategically
important South China Sea.
The relationship between đất and nước is a consistent theme in
Vietnamese history, from their prehistory to Chinese domination, and
Vietnamese independent dynasties. France pursued Vietnam’s đất nước
during the nineteenth century, leading to the establishment of the colony of
French Indochina and over half a century of colonial exploitation. During the
Second World War, Imperial Japan saw Vietnam as a source of rice to feed
its army and people across Asia. The Great Famine of 1944-1945 is
inseparable within this context of the exploitation of đất and nước. Though a
rarely discussed aspect of the Second World War, this famine played an
integral role in the story of the Vietnamese people’s economic exploitation
and their fight for sovereignty over their own đất nước.
The Great Famine of 1944-1945 took the lives of approximately one
million people, about eight percent of Vietnam’s population at the time.[1]
Though the famine was directly ignited by a series of typhoons that destroyed
an already weak harvest, there are two different narratives that run through
the history of the famine. One focuses on the intrusion of colonial powers
into Vietnam and their attempts to control Vietnam’s land and water, while
the other focuses on the resistance of the Vietnamese people.
The establishment of French Indochina in 1886 was the culmination of a
decades-long French endeavor to obtain Vietnam’s numerous natural
resources. Through the tumultuous years of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the French colonial regime established powerful regional
governments in the northern, central, and southern parts of modern Vietnam.
To establish control, they extracted natural resources and exploited the labor
of the Vietnamese people. The French also expanded the acreage of farmland
and superficially managed the complex irrigation and dike system that
protected the farmers of Vietnam, especially northern Vietnam, from failed
harvests.
After the defeat of France and the advent of the Vichy movement during
the Second World War, Imperial Japan entered the region and coerced the
Vichy government into a program of extreme extraction that pushed the
Vietnamese people to the brink of starvation. After four years of extremely
exploitative practices, it took just one year of drought and flooding to ignite a
devastating famine. After the Japanese military carried out a coup against the
Vichy government on March 9, 1945, they continued to carry out French
policies until they were overthrown by the Viet Minh in August of that year.
While this narrative is certainly important for understanding why the
famine was so devastating, it also erases the role of the Vietnamese people
themselves. During the years leading up to the Second World War and the
famine, a tide of resistance rose up against the French colonial machine. The
famine would eventually play an important role in the initial liberation of
Vietnam in 1945, as it boosted Vietnamese support for the nascent Viet Minh.
 The Viet Minh was an organization built on the efforts of two generations
of Vietnamese intellectual resistance. The first generation of intellectual
resistance was diverse and varied ideologically, however, many leaders of
the movement initially turned to Imperial Japan as an example of Asian
independence. The second, eventually successful, generation of intellectual
resistance was introduced to communism through the work of Nguyen Ai
Quoc, more commonly known as Ho Chi Minh. In 1941, Ho Chi Minh and his
allies adopted the popular front strategy and formed the Viet Minh. Utilizing
traditional Vietnamese social structures, Ho was able to harness the power of
the Vietnamese peasant class by turning communism into a promise for the
delivery from exploitation. Using the surrender of the Japanese on August 14,
1945, the Viet Minh was able to initiate a coup and turn their well-organized
revolutionary apparatus into the provisional government for the newly
founded Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
The famine is often discussed as a mere aspect of the rise of the Viet
Minh, a factor that contributed to their popular support and success.
However, the suffering and resilience of the Vietnamese people during a time
of extreme agrarian and civil unrest cannot be erased. Vietnamese voices
expressing their experiences during the famine are a crucial part of the
history surrounding the famine, which should be highlighted.
Both of these narratives tend to reduce the experience of the Vietnamese
people, especially when they are written by non-Vietnamese authors, viewing
the conflict within Vietnam during the 1940s from the outside. The English
language literature on the famine, though somewhat scant, was created by a
combination of non-Vietnamese and Vietnamese writers. The most
comprehensive English language book which focuses primarily on the famine
is Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh
Rise to Power (2014), written by Geoffrey C. Gunn. Rice Wars in Colonial
Vietnam discusses the famine and political developments in Vietnam in
tandem, with a focus on the political and economic developments that led to
the famine and the Viet Minh coup. Outside of Rice Wars in Colonial
Vietnam, there are a number of books that discuss the famine in the context of
the Viet Minh’s rise to power, as well as a number of academic journal
articles. The majority of these articles skew towards the economic, and many
of them aim to elucidate the causes of the famine or assign blame to the
various governments involved in Vietnam in the 1940s. Later in this work,
we survey the literature and discuss the various perspectives surrounding
blame for the famine in detail.
However, most of the literature about the famine remains in Vietnamese.
Nạn đói năm 1945 ở Việt Nam—Những chứng tích lịch sử (The 1945
Famine of Vietnam: Historical Records and Evidences) is one of the
definitive texts discussing the famine. The authors of this text, Van Tao and
Furuta Motoo, center on the oral history of the famine, and the book was
utilized by many English language authors to craft their own narratives.
There are a number of sources in French and Japanese as well,
particularly due to the fact that many of the primary sources concerning the
famine are located in French or Japanese archives. Unfortunately, we were
unable to utilize many non-English language sources due to the language
barrier. However, this publication utilizes numerous Vietnamese language
primary sources, many of which were translated into English during their
publication. Additionally, many of these Vietnamese language primary
sources are easily accessible on the Internet, indicating that the famine was
never forgotten in Vietnam.
Despite this, the famine remains relatively invisible on an international
scale. The lack of English language sources is one of the reasons why this
famine lacks visibility even though millions of people died as a result of it.
The question remains as to why this is not often covered in English-language
academia, or even in other English-language media. As mentioned earlier,
when the famine is discussed in English language media, it is often described
as a mere factor in the Viet Minh’s rise to power. It is possible that the
political events of the period, especially those involving global powers such
as Vichy France and Imperial Japan, overshadowed the atrocity of the
famine.
However, the famine’s scope demands that it should be addressed in its
own right. The sheer scale of death of this famine exists within a greater
context, one involving the deadly intersection of French and Japanese
colonialism. This context remains relevant to the lives of the Vietnamese
people today. As of 2021, the famine took place seventy-eight years ago. It is
likely that famine survivors are still alive, and even if the majority of famine
survivors have passed on, their children still live with the ramifications of
their parents’ health. A recent study showed that the famine “reduced literacy
by around three percent, BMI by 5.6%-8.4%, arm-length by 4.5%-6.7% (1.1-
1.7 cm), height by 2.2%-3.2% (3.4-5 cm), and weight by 10%-14% (4.7-6.9
kg).”[2] Therefore, these atrocities remain relevant to the modern day.
As the Great Famine of 1944-1945 remains remote to English speaking
audiences, we aim to elucidate the context, events, and effects of this famine.
Its causes and effects are relevant not only to the famine but also to
understanding modern Vietnamese history. We place the famine in the context
of Vietnamese geography, French colonialism and control of agricultural
practices, the Second World War, and Vietnamese resistance against French
and Imperial Japanese incursions. Understanding the famine is not just a
matter of analyzing harvest totals and death counts. Therefore, we have
chosen an approach that emphasizes two aspects of the famine: its historical
context and its tragic scope. The latter aspect is often discussed through
numbers, however, we have chosen to emphasize the narratives of
Vietnamese famine survivors to both counteract the lack of Vietnamese
secondary sources and emphasize to readers the loss of humanity that
occurred during this time. As for the former aspect, the context for the famine
could begin anywhere from the beginning of wet rice cultivation in the Red
River Delta to the surrender of France to Germany in 1940. However, we
chose to begin this narrative of the famine at the onset of the 1930s, which
saw the advent of a pattern of French control over Vietnamese agriculture
and subsequent Vietnamese agrarian unrest that would eventually escalate
into extreme exploitation and the rise of the Viet Minh. In order to better
understand the events of the 1930s, we begin with an overview of French
colonialism and Vietnamese resistance before 1930, which reveals that while
the Great Famine of 1944-1945 was a tragedy, it was certainly not an entirely
unexpected one.
 The French Colonial Period

French Conquest of the Mekong Delta

The two primary deltas of Vietnam.[3]

The Great Famine of 1944-1945 cannot be separated from the context of

French and Japanese colonialism. A thorough understanding of the French
colonial project in Vietnam is necessary to understand the famine. By the
year 1944, the institution of French Indochina had already existed for over
half a century. It was through the south that the French first gained power in
Vietnam, through the court of the Nguyen emperors. The French had been
traveling to Vietnam since the seventeenth century, for the purposes of
religious and colonial expansion. Military involvement began when a small
number of French troops unofficially supported the first Nguyen emperor, Gia
Long, during his bid for the throne.[4] French advisors remained present in the
Nguyen court as it ruled Vietnam, and during the reign of Napoleon III,
French ships began to shell central and southern cities such as Da Nang. In
1859, the French successfully took the southern city of Saigon, overturned the
Nguyen court’s export ban, and exported fifty-seven thousand tons of rice
from the southern region known to them as Cochinchina.
The French prioritized the growth of agriculture in the Mekong Delta, and
commenced land reclamation throughout the region. In addition to
constructing irrigation systems and canals, the French colonial government
sold vast tracts of land to French colons (colonists) and Vietnamese
dignitaries, altering the spectrum of land ownership throughout the region.
Society grew more polarized, to the point where 72% of the total population
owned no land, and only 2% of the total population owned approximately
half of the land in 1930.[5] On large land holdings, rice was grown using a
sharecropping system, while the few remaining small landowners farmed
their own lands. The standard of living of tenants remained low, even as
French Cochinchina exported as much as one million tons of rice every year.
[6]
The History of the French Conquest of the Red River Delta and the
Delta’s Historical Context

The French turned their attention to the northern part of Vietnam, known to
them as Tonkin, in the 1870s. French troops initially conquered Hanoi in
1873, and returned to fully conquer the city in 1882.[7] While Cochinchina
was considered a colony under the French, Tonkin was initially labelled as a
“protectorate,” meaning that the region was still nominally ruled by the
Nguyen court at Hue until 1887. However, the region was effectively ruled
by a French resident, who could demand audiences with the emperor.
Agriculture was not the primary priority of the French in Tonkin, who
aimed to gain access to southern China and Tonkin’s coal and mineral
supplies during their first invasion.[8] This did not stop the French from
attempting to develop a plantation economy in Tonkin, much like the one that
they had developed in Cochinchina. However, by the time the French arrived
in Tonkin, land in the arable Red River Delta was already greatly parceled.
The Red River Delta flows from the mountains of Yunnan, China, into the
Gulf of Tonkin in northern Vietnam. The drastic elevation change between the
river’s source and its delta makes for a fast flowing, rapidly changing river.
These changes only grew more dramatic beginning in the late seventeenth
century, when mining began in areas near the river’s source.[9] The stripping
of sediment from settled mining regions turned the river red with sediment,
leading to the river’s modern name.
The Red River’s high sediment content was deposited in its delta,
leading to a constantly changing landscape. The delta’s landscape has been
regularly growing for four thousand years, opening more land for human
settlement in the western delta. The modern waterways of the delta were only
established in the past three hundred years, emphasizing the dynamic nature
of the landscape.[10] Due to the uneven deposition of sediments and the
already present soil varieties of the region, the delta consists of distinct
regions. In general, the central and lower delta, where the Red River
deposited most of its sediments, is richer in nutrients.
Due to its more northern latitude, northern Vietnam experiences more
distinct seasons than its southern counterpart. Broadly speaking, the wet
season lasts from April to October, while the dry season lasts from
November to March.[11] However, there is great regional variation within this
pattern, and many regions, such as Hanoi, can distinguish four seasons. The
delta also generally receives a preliminary rainy period during midwinter
due to its northern latitude. The long rainy season, combined with the risk of
typhoons during the same period and the fast flow of the Red River,
contributes to a high risk of flooding in the Red River Delta.[12] According to
the historical record, flood years are often followed by drought years.[13] The
flood and drought cycle endanger crops grown in the delta, placing the
population of the region at risk of famine.
Humans have lived in the delta region since 14,000 BCE.[14] The
archeological record is incomplete due to significant changes occurring in
the northern region, including the submersion of a vast region of land, now
under the Gulf of Tonkin. At about 2,000 BCE, the South China Sea receded
to reveal the Red River’s floodplain. Agriculture began in the hills
surrounding the delta, where farmers used the slash-and-burn method to clear
land. It was during Vietnam’s Bronze Age, around 1,000 BCE, that wet rice
agriculture began.[15] Due to the constant risk of flood, dikes and irrigation
systems were utilized to control the flow of water. The irrigation systems in
place during the French colonial period and afterwards “literally represented
the accumulated labor of millions over history.”[16]
 The Red River Delta is also considered to be the location of the first
Vietnamese kingdoms, with its capital in what is now Hanoi.[17] When the
Chinese arrived during the Qin and Han dynasties, they conquered the
northern and central regions and ruled from near modern Hanoi, leaving the
central and southern parts of modern Vietnam to their Cham and Khmer
rulers. When the independent Vietnamese kingdom of Dai Viet emerged after
the collapse of the Song Dynasty in the tenth century, it controlled only the
north and parts of the central region of modern Vietnamese and ruled from the
capital of Hanoi, on the delta. Power over Vietnam was concentrated in the
hands of those who ruled the Red River Delta. Likewise, the delta has
always held a large concentration of the Vietnamese population relative to its
size. By the 1930s, one third of the Indochinese population lived in the delta,
which only represented two percent of Indochina’s land.[18] This meant that
even before French conquest, land in the delta was highly parceled among
small, midsized, and large landholders.
Although land on and near the delta was given to French colons, the
sharecropping system utilized in Cochinchina did not work in Tonkin. This
was because Vietnamese farmers in Tonkin lacked the motivation to become
sharecroppers, and those who found their land under French control
remained noncompliant in resistance.[19] Therefore, land in Tonkin remained
highly parceled under the French, and the majority of its rural inhabitants
were subsistence farmers who relied on smaller plots of land for food.
In addition to attempting to change the land parcelization of Tonkin,
French authorities found the Nguyen administration’s hydraulic management
lacking.[20] As mentioned before, the system of dikes and canals in Tonkin
represented centuries’ worth of attempts to control the Red River’s frequent
floods. The condition of the dikes was especially crucial to preventing
floods that would destroy harvests and devastate millions of Vietnamese
farmers. The French began to dike the Red River Delta in 1923.[21] While
both Vietnamese and French constructed dikes were constantly widened and
raised, the materials that were used left dikes vulnerable to erosion. They
could break or be breached if floodwaters rose high enough or flowed fast
enough. A similar situation occurred in the case of irrigation canals, crucial
for alleviating famine caused by droughts. Periodical famines caused by the
flood and drought cycle led to French consideration of an unprecedented
delta-wide management program.
As in Tonkin, central Vietnam, known to the French as Annam, was
designated as a protectorate. It was the last of the three regions of Vietnam to
be incorporated fully into the French empire, remaining a rump state until
resistance from royalist forces encouraged French forces to fully conquer the
region. Though Annam and Tonkin were considered parts of French
Indochina, they were nominally ruled by the Nguyen court from Hue, although
real power lay in the hands of the French resident. This meant that the civil
service in the protectorates remained in the hands of the Confucian scholar-
officials. Vietnamese law remained in place, and the typical structures of
Vietnamese rural life, such as the village, remained intact. The preservation
of traditional social structures would prove crucial in the next decades, as
Vietnamese leaders relied on community organization to resist the colonial
regime.
A rough outline of the divisions between Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina.[22]
Anti-Colonial Resistance

Due to the maintenance of past social structures, much of the resistance

against French colonialism took place in Annam and Tonkin. Military
resistance began with the Can Vuong (Save the King) movement in Annam,
however, this was defeated by Cochinchinese forces in 1882.[23] The last
form of major military resistance against the French until after the Second
World War took place in the hills of Tonkin, where Hoang Hoa Tham held
out until 1913. From then on, the majority of anti-colonial resistance would
be carried out on a different playing field, led first by Confucian-educated
intellectuals who passed their torch to educated, professional
revolutionaries. The Annam provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh, collectively
known as Nghe Tinh, were known for the revolutionary movements and
leaders they produced.
 French Indochina in the context of Southeast Asia, 1886 [24]

Nghe An was the birthplace of one of the leaders of the first generation of
intellectual resistance, Phan Boi Chau. Phan Boi Chau was studying for the
Confucian civil service examinations when the Can Vuong movement
collapsed, and he turned to the organization of a society that would further
the cause of anti-colonial resistance. In 1904, he obtained the allegiance of
the Nguyen Prince Cuong De, who he used as a rallying point for his
organization, The Reformation Society (Duy Tan Huy).
Cuong De had received some support from Imperial Japan, and many first
generation intellectual anti-colonialists also looked to Japan as a base for
future activities and a model for reform.[25] This movement towards Japan
was known as the Dong Du Movement. This first generation varied
individually in terms of ideology, ranging from monarchist to republican.
Despite these differences, the movement was distinctly nationalist, focusing
only on anti-colonial resistance instead of a nationalist and proletariat
revolution. Various groups based on different ideologies appeared and
disappeared, but none were as influential as Phan Boi Chau’s organization,
nor as successful as the second generation of revolutionaries.
Although Phan Boi Chau lived much of his revolutionary career in exile
or house arrest, he still influenced the second, ultimately successful
generation of revolutionaries, led by the enigmatic Ho Chi Minh. Phan was a
friend of Ho’s father and influenced Ho’s patriotism when he was a child
named Nguyen Tat Thanh.[26] Nguyen was educated in the Confucian tradition,
though he was expelled from school as a teen due to his participation as a
translator for peasant uprisings in Hue. Eventually, he left Vietnam in 1911
and travelled the world as a messboy on various French liners.[27] He settled
in France after the end of the First World War, where he quickly became
affiliated with the nationalist organizations founded by the first generation of
revolutionaries in exile.
There, he founded a nationalist group called the Association of Annamite
Patriots with the help of first generation anti-colonialists Phan Chu Trinh and
Phan Van Truong. This organization, like many other nationalist groups in
Paris at the time, sought to take advantage of the Versailles Peace Conference
happening at the time (Duiker chapter 2) Ho, with the help of his colleagues,
wrote an eight-point declaration demanding equality under the law for both
the Vietnamese and French people, freedom of speech, religion and
assembly, amnesty for Vietnamese political prisoners, and Vietnamese
representation in the French government.[28] This declaration was called
“Revendications du Peuple Annamite,” and it was signed by Nguyen Ai
Quoc, the most famous of Ho’s numerous names. Ho was responsible for
publicizing the document, and he personally delivered it to both the President
of France and the Palace of Versailles, as well as published it in a socialist
paper.
 Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) at the French Communist Congress at Marseilles,
1921.[29]

Although he received notes from world leaders that his declaration had
been received, nothing came of it. This was merely part of the trend of
rejection of the Fourteen Points to reach compromises between the European
powers, however, it did effectively mark one of the first official requests for
basic liberties to be extended to the Vietnamese people, and the first missed
chance at the peaceful attainment of such rights. France left the conference
with its power in Indochina intact, setting the stage for the events of the next
two decades.
The 1930s set the stage for the chaos and hardship faced by the
Vietnamese people during the 1940s. By this time, French colonization had
officially controlled all of Vietnam for over four decades. The 1930s saw the
advent of the movements that would dominate the events of 1944 and 1945,
from the official start of the communist movement in Indochina to large
agrarian crises that would set a precedent for famine management in Tonkin.
The year 1930 itself was pivotal in the development of the movements and
institutions that would prove prominent in later decades.
The Great Depression and Its Effects on Indochina

The most notable global event of the year 1930 was the Great Depression.
Areas that were more connected to the global economy through trade were
more affected, meaning that French Indochina and its rice trade was
influenced by the global depression. Prices began to fall around 1930 and
recovered by 1934.[30] The fall in rice prices made it easier for rice buyers to
purchase rice, but those who sold their surplus rice faced problems. Rice
sellers had to make up for lost income and taxes by selling more rice than
they usually would, and landlords and debtors kept up the pressure.[31]
Economically, the subsistence-based farmers of the north were less
affected because they did not rely on exports. Tonkin did not lose much
cultivated land in comparison to Cochinchina, though concessions were
given up by both the French and Vietnamese landowners.[32] However, the
overpopulation and high parcelization of land led to high unemployment
rates. In addition to economic pressures, there were both floods and droughts
during during 1930, affecting the rice harvest (Gunn 87).[33] The meager
harvest, combined with the lower prices of rice, led to a food shortage in the
region that caused famine in some areas of Annam and Tonkin. The events of
the early 1930s must be considered within the context of food shortages and
economic hardship caused by the depression that would continue to affect the
Mekong Delta region as the Pacific theatre of the Second World War grew
more intense.
The Rise of the Communist Movement

Perhaps one of the most important events of 1930 was the formation of the
Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in the February of that year. The success
of the ICP in 1945 was predicated on the specific condition of the anti-
colonial movement in Vietnam during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to the
communists’ message of liberation from the economic hardships of French
colonialism, the lack of a coherent rival organization made it easier for the
ICP to expand its influence.[34] The Yen Bai Mutiny in February 1930
coincided with the foundation of the ICP, just as it removed the ICP’s greatest
rival organization.
The Vietnamese Nationalist Party (VNQDD) embodied the first
generation of revolutionaries’ philosophies, and was founded in 1927. Based
on the model of the Kuomintang (KMT) in China, it was ideologically
confused but traditionalist in nature.[35] Despite its ideological confusion, the
VNQDD remained a rival to the infant communist movement in Vietnam.
However, their penchant for violence in the quest for independence led to
their downfall. First, the assassination of the director of the General Office
of Indochinese Manpower in 1929 led to a French-led purge of the
VNQDD’s regional sections.[36] After the destruction of numerous cadres due
to political violence, the party planned one last act of rebellion in the
garrison of Yen Bai. However, the French were already informed of the
mutiny, and it was easily squashed within a day (Kiernan 364).[37]
This led to the destruction of the VNQDD, as the leaders of the
organization were quickly arrested after the failed mutiny. For the infant
communist movement, the fall of the VNQDD proved that revolution without
a specific ideology was doomed to fail. Additionally, it meant that the
communist movement had no other ideological or major organizational rival,
which led to communist domination of the anti-colonial movement.
Meanwhile, the communist movement itself was gaining traction as it
developed from a number of small movements into a singular party. Up until
1930, Vietnam did not have one communist party. In general, there were two
primary groups of communists: the League of Vietnamese Revolutionary
Youth (known as the Thanh Nien and founded by Nguyen Ai Quoc) and the
Indochinese Communist League (founded by followers of Phan Boi Chan and
called the Thanh Viet).[38] The former split in two 1929, and Nguyen Ai Quoc
convened a conference in Hong Kong in the name of the Comintern
(Communist International) to unify the parties.
In February 1930, the factions agreed to unite and named themselves the
Vietnamese Communist Party. However, the party was soon reprimanded by
Comintern and ordered to reform, so in October 1930, the party changed its
name to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and established their goals
and programs, which were followed for the next several years.[39] Much of
the organizational apparatus established at this First Plenum in October has
remained unchanged up to the modern day. Unfortunately, coming out into the
open meant that the party’s leadership was exposed, and many leaders were
placed in jail in 1931.[40] Due to the Comintern’s greater involvement in the
ICP in the following years, Nguyen Ai Quoc’s influence in the party waned
and the party itself experienced several years of internal struggle over the
question of nationalism.[41] Nguyen himself was jailed in 1931 and was
rumored to have died in prison.
The Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement

The rise of communist ideology and organizational apparatus in Vietnam was

especially prominent in the traditionally belligerent provinces of Nghe An
and Ha Tinh, collectively known as Nghe Tinh. After the Yen Bai rebellion
and the founding of the ICP, revolutionary activity around the entire country
increased under the eye of an increasing number of French troops.[42] This
involved the dissemination of communist propaganda, strikes, and even the
assassination of minor government figures. However, the French authorities
were more concerned with strikes and demonstrations in the more
economically important south, so revolutionary activity in Tonkin and
Annam, especially in Nghe Tinh, continued.
 The provinces of Nghe An and Ha Tinh, collectively known as Nghe Tinh, are marked.
[43]

This came to a head at the beginning of September 1930 when the French
bombed a mass demonstration in Vinh, leading to one hundred and forty-one
deaths and hundreds more being injured.[44] In the ensuing chaos, many
village leaders gave up their positions under pressure from peasant groups
that were organized under the ICP and known as “soviets.” Protests
continued as French troops poured into Nghe Tinh to “pacify” the region.
This involved razing soviet villages, as well as killing and deporting
“rebels,” meaning anyone who was caught by the French troops.[45]
 The sheer brutality of the French troops led to the destruction of
numerous villages and the deaths of thousands, leading to a backlash from
French citizens. Although the government fired many important officials,
many of their replacements were more brutal than their predecessors.[46] By
the end of 1931, most communist cadres had been killed or disbanded in fear,
and with the ICP’s own leadership in shambles, communism in Vietnam had
been dealt an almost fatal blow.
The Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement’s significance lies in its economic and
meteorological context and its foreshadowing of the political and economic
situation in 1945. Unrest in Nghe Tinh was not simply predicated on the
conception of the ICP. Instead, peasants latched onto communist ideology
during a period of extreme hardship. Rice prices were at their lowest during
1931, and both the fall harvest of 1929 and the spring harvest of 1930 had
failed. The combination of low amounts of paddy and low price led to
famine in certain parts of Annam. Much of the unrest during 1930 and 1931
arose from “rice borrowing” expeditions, where rice was often violently
redistributed from stocks to the poor.[47] Therefore, famine played an
important role in the Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement, as a condition that
enhanced the struggle against colonialism carried out by the Vietnamese
people.
The role of famine in the Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement foreshadowed the
role of famine in the August Revolution. However, the main difference
between the August Revolution and the Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement lay in
the scale of the movement and the organizational capability of the ICP.
Without the degree of planning that went into the August Revolution, as well
as the time that the ICP had to grow its organization’s branches across
Vietnam, the Nghe Tinh Soviet Movement was doomed. While bursts of
uprising continued across Tonkin and Annam, such as the Annam Anti-tax
Movement of 1932-1934, further rebellion was brutally crushed by the
French. Mass arrests destroyed the ICP’s fledgling organization, leading to a
low point in the anti-colonial movement.
The Popular Front and the Beginning of the Second World War

1936 brought major changes to French Indochina, due to the election of the
Popular Front government in France. This new government provided new
opportunities for the anti-colonial movement in Vietnam, as well as an
opportunity for the French government to prove its ability to handle agrarian
crises. The Popular Front and the ICP were linked through their connection
with Communist International (Comintern). In 1935, Comintern reversed its
policy towards alliances with moderate and socialist policies, advocating
for unity against the rising tide of fascism.[48] This enabled the French
Communist Party to join with the French Socialist Party and other leftist
parties to form a left-leaning government.
Within Vietnam, the temporary liberalization of the legislature saw the
creation of another alliance, once between Stalinists and Trotskyists.[49] The
primary difference between these two groups lay in their aims. While the
Trotskyists were focused on ending imperialist capitalism, the Stalinists
were focused on ending feudalism. Nevertheless, these two groups allied in
Cochinchina under their newspaper, La Lutte, and achieved temporary
success in regional elections, such as the Saigon Municipal Council elections
of 1933, 1935, and 1937.[50]
Meanwhile, political prisoners, released by the Popular Front, led the
beginnings of the revival of the ICP in Tonkin. The actions of these two
groups led to mass support for Marxist candidates among the people of all
three regions of Vietnam. However, the revival of the ICP led to the
dissolution of the La Lutte group in 1937.[51] Nevertheless, the non-ICP
affiliated La Lutte group had eased the way for the ICP to form
organizational networks in Cochinchina, due to the positive public opinion
they had built up during their years in government. Factional disputes and
leadership from Comintern made it difficult for the ICP to prepare fully for
the revolution they claimed to be working towards.

The front page of La Lutte, February 23, 1935.[52]

Meanwhile, the whole of Vietnam experienced an agrarian crisis during

1936 and 1937. Rice prices had recovered to their pre-depression numbers
by 1934, leading French officials to believe that the economy had fully
recovered from the chaos of the first few years of the decade.[53] However,
the monsoon rains came late in 1936, leading to a deficient spring 1937
harvest in Tonkin and Annam.[54] The same year, floods struck both the
northern and southern parts of Vietnam, destroying rice fields. The Popular
Front government took major steps to try to alleviate the hardship, by
shipping rice from less affected areas to suffering regions, starting public
works to provide jobs, and providing financial aid and rations, as well as
loans and seeds for the recovery of cultivation.
The quick action taken by the government represented the culmination of
the French capability for disaster management in Indochina. Although the
1936-1937 crisis proved that the colonial government was capable of
conducting flood, drought, and famine relief, the events of the next decade
would make it impossible to operate with such efficiency. The 1936-1937
crisis ended with a drop in rice prices in 1938.[55] Although this was partially
due to an abundant harvest in Cochinchina, the fall in demand from China due
to the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War also played a role. French
Indochina’s proximity to China meant that it was only a matter of time before
the war reached Tonkin, whose land border with southern China was
significant.
Tonkin and southern China were linked by the Hai Phong-Yunnan
Railroad. During the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, activity
along the Hai Phong-Yunnan Railroad was allowed to continue, and revenue
increased significantly during the war years (Tuan). This probably meant that
the railroad was being used to transport goods to support the KMT across the
Chinese border. After the French did not respond to Japanese requests to shut
the railroad down, the Japanese began to bomb the railroad to put pressure
on the French in 1939.[56] The Second World War had officially reached
Vietnam, and with it came a variety of changes that would create the
conditions for rapid change.
1940: Imperial Japan’s Entry into Indochina Comes to a Head

Beginning in 1940, Indochina was dominated by three major parties: the

French, the Japanese and the ICP. Each party, especially the Japanese,
fundamentally changed Indochina’s economic and political scene, which
brought about both revolution and disaster. The entry of the Japanese into
Indochinese affairs was only cemented with the German defeat of France and
the establishment of the Vichy government in the June of 1940.[57] The advent
of a new, German-allied government in France made it easier for the
Japanese to expand their interests in the region, as represented by the
Japanese bombing of Hai Phong and the Battle of Lang Son on September 22,
1940.[58] A day after the bombing, the Japanese and French signed an
agreement that would allow the Japanese use of the port of Hai Phong and
garrisons in the Lang Son area.[59] This provided a strategic base for the
Japanese to attack southern China and other parts of Southeast Asia.
 Japanese advance on Lang Son in 1940 [60]

Additionally, the Japanese military presence in Indochina allowed them

to requisition provisions, especially rice, for their own troops. Although no
requests were made by the Japanese, French Indochina exported 468,280
tons of rice to Japan.[61] This consisted of 25.9% of Japan’s total rice import
for the year.[62] In later years, the tons of rice exported to Japan, as well as
the percentage of Japan’s total rice import, would increase as Japan gained
control of the Indochinese economy. The relationship between the Japanese
and Vichy governments would come to define the agricultural and economic
policy that affected the lives of millions of Vietnamese.
The advent of the war had an especially large impact on the farmers of
Cochinchina, whose livelihoods were more dependent on the global market.
The drop in rice prices due to the fall in demand from China, combined with
the high taxes collected by the French government and the high cost of living,
led to economic hardships for the farmers of the Mekong Delta.[63] At this
time, the ICP’s network in Cochinchina was highly developed, even more
than the Tonkin and Annam regional committees’ networks. To the southern
regional committee, the circumstances caused by the war, in particular by the
threat of the Japanese-allied Thailand, were ripe for an armed insurrection.
The regional committee planned the revolution for November 22, 1940,
and while the Seventh Plenum had decided to call off the uprising, the
decision did not reach Cochinchina due to the arrest of the messenger.[64] The
plan was discovered by the Surete, and the numerous attacks on various
military bases ended with failure.[65] This led to the effective destruction of
the ICP’s network in southern Indochina, similar to the destruction of the
ICP’s network in Annam nearly a decade before.[66] High-level ICP members
were executed, and thousands more were arrested whether or not they were
involved in the mistakenly ordered uprising. In addition to wrecking the
southern ICP network, this altered the balance of power between the northern
and southern leaders within the party. Now, power lay in the hands of the
northern and central Vietnamese leaders, which would change the course of
the ICP’s and Vietnamese history towards a different strategy of insurrection.
Nam Ky Uprising, 1940.[67]
1941: The Rice Accords and the Formation of the Viet Minh

If the events of 1940 introduced all of the major players vying for control of
Vietnam during the Second World War, the events of 1941 established the
paths they would take towards the climax of 1945. The decisions made by the
Vichy French, the Japanese, and the ICP in 1941 founded the institutions and
relationships that would come to define the following years.
The most important development in Vichy-Japanese relations took place
in the first half of 1941, with the signing of the “Accord Commercial Franco-
Japonaise” in Tokyo. This agreement effectively tied Indochina’s economy to
Japan. Many Japanese imports were free from tariffs and the complicated
payment system was designed to fulfil Japan’s wartime needs. It provided
Japan with the total surplus of the rice and corn harvest, as well as rubber
and minerals. The Japanese requested Governor General Decoux to sign an
agreement about the exportation of 100 tons of rice from Saigon to Japan and
the transportation of a million tons of rice for the Japanese military in one
year, including the amount of rice to provide for ten thousand Japanese troops
stationed in Indochina.[68]
In addition to exporting rice to Japan at tariff free rates using a complex
payment system, the French government was also obliged to provide ten
thousand Japanese troops stationed within Indochina with provisions.
Initially, the yearly export was set at one million tons of rice and corn.[69]
This accord accelerated the exploitation of Indochinese farmers, especially
those in regions where subsistence farming was the primary mode of food
production.
 Japanese troops arriving in Saigon, 1941 [70]

In order to control the market in Cochinchina in advance of the exports,

the French formed the Comité de direction pour le commerce et l’exportation
des paddy, riz et dérivé.[71] The northern equivalent was the Directions des
Services Economiques based in Hai Phong. This tight control of the economy
was typical of Vichy France, however, the control of Indochina’s economy
was exercised for the purpose of meeting Japanese demands.
These methods resulted in the Indochinese exportation of 854, 577 tons of
rice to Japan, according to the Ministere de l’Information. According to the
Annuaire statistique de l’Indochine, the total amount of rice exported was
583,323 tons.[72] Based on the lower number, Indochinese rice exports
consisted of a quarter of Japan’s total rice imports.[73] Due to the harsh
demands, French authorities restricted the daily individual ration of paddy to
750 grams.[74] This was the beginning of French contribution to a food
shortage that would begin to affect Tonkin as early as 1943.
At this point, the ICP recognized that the new political situation in
Indochina offered them new opportunities to further their goals. By 1941, it
was clear that the combination of French and Japanese dominion over
Indochina would likely destroy its land and people before the ICP got the
opportunity to carry out the bourgeoisie-democratic revolution. In order to
deal with the new situation in Indochina, the ICP met at its Eighth Plenum in
the caves of Pac Bo, on the Chinese border.[75]
Conducted in the mountainous homeland of the Nung ethnic minority, the
famous Nguyen Ai Quoc (later Ho Chi Minh) presided over the meeting,
which was dominated by representatives from the north and central regions.
The most important decision made at the plenum was the decision to
temporarily put aside the bourgeoisie-democratic revolution and focus on the
national liberation revolution.[76] By choosing to focus on national liberation,
the ICP gained the ability to take advantage of Vietnamese nationalism and
therefore obtain popular support, even from non-communists.
The formation of the League for the Independence of Vietnam, commonly
known as the Viet Minh, was the key to obtaining this popular support. Based
on the concept of the popular front, the Viet Minh front was technically an
organizational front of the ICP, but this was disguised through the creation of
“National Salvation” organizations that translated communist jargon into
easily spreadable slogans for the common people, communist or not.[77] From
1941 onwards, the Viet Minh would serve as the ICP’s primary
organizational front.
1942: The Intensification of Agricultural Exploitation

As the Second World War raged on in Europe and Asia, French and Japanese
exploitation of Indochina accelerated. 1942 saw the advent of various
strategies implemented by the French in order to satisfy growing Japanese
demands. These strategies would prove fatal as they were implemented,
sowing the seeds of famine in Tonkin. Two major agreements, which would
deeply affect French policy towards Indochinese farmers, were made in
1942. The first of these was signed on July 18, in which the Vichy
government agreed to provide the Japanese with 1,050,000 tons of rice and
45,000 tons of white flour.[78] The second was signed on August 19, which
promised the Japanese the entire exportable surplus of rice from the 1942-
1943 harvest.
In order to meet the numbers required by the Japanese, the Vichy
government founded the Comite des Cereales, which operated through the
Comptoir des Cereales.[79] This state-owned company maintained a
monopoly over rice procurement, cutting out the traditional middlemen.
However, the process by which the state collected its rice was far from
beneficial to the farmers of Indochina. In Tonkin, 1942 saw the beginning of
state requisition of rice.[80] The implemented system was based on land
ownership. Essentially, villagers were forced to provide the state with a
portion of their paddy proportional to the amount of land they owned.[81] The
fixed price imposed by the government was much lower than the market
price, leading to increased economic hardship.
In addition to requisitioning paddy, the French government began
enforcing crop conversion in order to meet the imposed quotas of other
goods such as castor oil and jute.[82] Between 1941 and 1943, the acreage of
land cultivated for fibrous and oleaginous plants increased by a factor of
anywhere between three and fifteen.[83] The effect of the enforced cultivation
of non-staple plants led to a fall in the amount of rice being produced, which
contributed to the impending food crisis.
At the end of 1942, the French exported 973,000 tons of rice to Japan,
which made up 37% of the total of Japan’s imported rice. This did not meet
Japan’s initial request of 1,050,000 tons of rice, indicating that the Japanese
demands were unrealistic.[84] This was true especially given the
circumstances in which Indochinese farmers, especially Tonkinese farmers,
were working. Tonkin’s high, concentrated population, combined with the
high paddy levies, enforced crop conversion, and high market price, led to
worsening living conditions.
As the farmers suffered under the yoke of unrealistic Japanese and French
rice quotas, the liberation front underwent a period of stagnation. In the latter
half of 1941, the Vichy government destroyed the Viet Minh base in the
northern, mountainous region of Bac Son, resulting in a lack of momentum in
the Viet Minh’s preparations for insurrection. Even Nguyen Ai Quoc, now
using the name Ho Chi Minh, was imprisoned on a trip to China to gain KMT
support for the Viet Minh’s cause.[85] Overall, 1942 saw the intensification of
Japanese and French oppression of Vietnamese farmers and rebels.
1943: The Portents of Famine

Globally, 1943 was a turning point of the Second World War. The Axis
powers suffered major setbacks in North Africa, Italy, and China, changing
the circumstances within Indochina. However, the power dynamic between
Vichy France and Japan was shifting to favor the Japanese. With the Franco-
Japanese Accord of January 25, 1943, the Japanese were able to commission
1,125,000 tons of rice from Indochina, a greater amount than the previous
year.[86] The Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, the company responsible for handling
rice exports from Indochina to Japan, exercised even greater control over the
system than in the previous year. In September, the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha
squeezed the yield premium system to command even more rice deliveries.[87]
This led to increased Japanese control over the rice exports, foreshadowing
the military control that Japan would eventually exercise in 1945.
In order to meet the increased numbers demanded by the Japanese,
French authorities further decreased the daily paddy ration to under 500
grams.[88] Meanwhile, productivity in Tonkin was steadily declining, falling
by about ten kilograms of paddy per year. The combination of the low daily
paddy ration, low productivity, and high demands led to the beginnings of
famine in Tonkin in 1943. Based on the continuity of their exploitative
practices, the French authorities were either unable or unwilling to take steps
to handle the issue before it grew into a full-blown famine.
Since peasants were unable to purchase rice at the high market price
because they were forced to sell their own paddy at a low price to the state
owned comptoir, raising the government’s prices may have provided some
relief. However, the Vichy government only increased prices by 25% in
1943, which did virtually nothing to ease the hunger of the farmers.[89]
Another solution would have been to transport rice from the more productive
region of Cochinchina to Tonkin. However, the Japanese had commissioned
the North-South Railroad in late 1942 to transport weapons and soldiers, so
government authorities were unable to use it to transport much-needed rice to
Tonkin.[90]
The Allied forces were well aware of the Japanese use of the North-
South Railroad and other infrastructure in Indochina to support their troops
across Asia. Technically, Indochina came under the jurisdiction of the
Southeast Asian Command (SEAC), an Anglo-American joint operation led
by Lord Admiral Mountbatten. However, the Americans were generally
distrustful of European intentions in regions where they held colonial
possessions, so initial American action in Indochina was conducted
independently of the British or the French.[91] During 1943, the Fourteenth Air
Force, stationed in Kunming, began bombing the Japanese transport lines
within and off the coast of Indochina. By the end of 1943, any attempt to use
land infrastructure or shipping routes to transport rice from Cochinchina to
Tonkin was at high risk of being bombed by American forces.[92]
With the help of harsh policies that harmed the farmers of Vietnam, the
Vichy government was able to provide Japan with 1,023,471 tons of rice in
1943.[93] The amount of rice that was exported to Japan consisted of 58.3% of
Japan’s total rice imports for the year. The land allotted for jute production in
Tonkin grew from 300 hectares in 1942 to 14,200 hectares in 1943, all at the
expense of rice fields. Rice exports to Japan hit their peak in 1943, even as
food availability between 1942 and 1944 fell by as much as 25% in certain
provinces.[94] 1943 saw both the beginnings of famine and further integration
into Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, foreshadowing the
climactic political and agrarian developments of 1945.
 As the beginnings of famine began to affect Tonkin, the Viet Minh began
the process of building their popular front. In February 1943, the ICP’s
Central Committee met to build a plan to accelerate preparations for
insurrection.[95] The Central Committee recognized that they lacked support in
the most crucial places since the Viet Minh had been unable to shed their
worker-peasant character for a national character that would appeal to a
greater sector of the population. Therefore, 1943 saw an increase in efforts
to gain Viet Minh support among the rural and urban population. The Viet
Minh’s most important strategy during 1943 was to utilize the existing
structures of Vietnamese society to gain support from the urban population
(Khánh 273).[96] Although Viet Minh support had not yet reached its peak,
support from city dwellers became crucial during the August Revolution of
1945, proving the importance of the Viet Minh’s united front strategy.
At this point, the main Viet Minh base remained in the mountains of Cao
Bang. In 1943, the Viet Minh claimed over 1,184 militiamen, 5,435 members,
and several counties within the three northern provinces of Cao Bang, Lang
Son, and Bac Kan.[97] This liberated base region proved resilient, even after
the Vichy government began to target Viet Minh activities in the region in
November 1943.
 Vo Nguyen Giap with a Viet Minh militia, 1944.[98]

The events of the years between 1940 and 1944 were the foundation for
the Great Famine of 1944-1945. The advent of the Second World War led to
Vietnam’s domination by two colonial powers instead of one, placing
Vietnam on the path to disaster. Four years of the enforced requisition of
paddy and crop conversion pushed the Vietnamese people to the brink of
starvation, especially in the densely populated region of Tonkin. However,
leaders of the resistance movement saw the Second World War as an
opportunity to escalate the fight for sovereignty over Vietnam. These four
years brought the simmering tensions between the Vietnamese, French, and
Japanese to the boil, setting the stage for when these tensions would explode
into violence and death in 1944 and 1945.
The Famine (1944-45)

Although the event historically recognized as the North Vietnam famine took
place between 1944 and 1945, the onset of this atrocity had been set in
motion decades prior under the French colonial mishandling of Vietnamese
lands. In 1945, during the height of the famine, the Vietnamese agronomist
Nghiem Xuan Yem published an article entitled “The Crisis of a Hungry
Population,” writing:
“All through the sixty years of French colonization our people have
always been hungry [original italics].’ They were not hungry to the degree
that they had to starve in such numbers that their corpses were thrown up in
piles as they are now. But they have always been hungry, so hungry that their
bodies were scrawny and stunted, so hungry that no sooner had they finished
with one meal than they started worrying about the next; and so hungry that
the whole population had not a moment of free time to think of anything
besides the problem of survival.”[99]
Rice output in Tonkin had been falling for decades, but its population
was growing. As early as the 1920s, Tonkin was teetering on the precipice of
food insecurity, consuming around eighty percent of the food grown in its
region, whereas Cochinchina consistently maintained a surplus. The poor in
Tonkin often only ate a single meal per day and were only sufficiently fed for
about four months out of the year, typically after harvests. The specter of
famine always loomed—in 1937, it was narrowly avoided only by rice
imports from Cochinchina’s surplus.[100] Sugata Bose pinpoints 1943 as the
year when starvation deaths began en masse in Tonkin,[101] but the worst
phase lasted from May 1944 until March 1945.
 A mass of hungry citizens begging in front of a market in Hanoi.[102]

The years 1941-44 saw the conversion of an unspecified quantity of

Tonkin rice land to industrial crops such as jute and castor oil seed. Natural
crises added another layer of hardship—drought and insects decreased the
spring 1944 rice harvest by nineteen percent compared to the spring 1943
crop, and on top of it all, a string of typhoons ruined the rice crop that would
have been harvested in the autumn of 1944. Tonkin farmers were forced to
sell much of what little viable rice was left over to the colonial government,
leaving them with nothing to feed themselves or their families.[103]
By December 1944, many peasants in Tonkin and northern Annam were
forced to subsist on anything that was available: rice husks, banana tree
roots, clover, and tree bark. Most Tonkin peasants had typically relied on
purchasing imported clothing, as Vietnam produced very little of its own
textiles, but Japan had sent almost none after the onset of World War II.
Combined with the particularly cold winter that year, a large number of rural
Tonkinites tried to escape to larger towns and cities where there might have
been more available resources, but many died on the journey.[104]
 Famine victims in Hanoi, 1945.[105]

The number of casualties from the famine came to a zenith during the
spring of 1945 that preceded the June rice harvest. Amid this, on March 9 the
French colonial government encountered a coup de force by the Japanese,
who feared a French colonial uprising against them as their power in the war
waned. French general Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free France
movement against the Nazi government in World War II, had hoped against,
but still anticipated, a challenge to the Indochina colonial administration.
However, de Gaulle wound up attempting to employ the coup to gain
political power, as this Franco-Japanese tension proved that the Nazi-
collaborating Vichy France state had truly fallen, shielding French resistance
fighters from residual Allied criticisms.[106] On March 24, de Gaulle issued a
declaration of condemnation about the coup, attempting to assure the people
of Indochina that France was fighting for them—that they stood in solidarity.
[107]

However, on the other side, Imperial Japan had quickly announced their
seizure of power, and the Vietnamese were reveling in France’s public
humiliation.[108] Japan promised to support Vietnamese moves towards
autonomy, and even actively encouraged Vietnamese emperor Bảo Đại to
declare independence, but left the details of what ‘independence’ entailed
vague.[109]
Although the worst waves of the famine were subsiding by August 1945,
when the Viet Minh took over and established the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam, the north’s food supply was once again threatened by natural
disaster. Several breaks in the Red River’s dikes flooded more than 300,000
hectares of rice fields, resulting in a loss of about one-third of the crop that
would have been harvested in November.[110] A large-scale emergency
response began quickly, as the nascent government of the establishing
Democratic Republic of Vietnam faced an early leadership test in their
ability to rehabilitate the dike system and stymie the numbers of starvation
casualties. A successful campaign to grow corn, yams, and beans to mitigate
the effects of the lost rice reflected positively on their ability to govern but
could not fully compensate for the region’s losses. Additional measures were
taken to transport some of the south’s rice surplus to the suffering north.
Revolutionary committees developed militaristic defense plots to protect
ships carrying rice northward, but they were met with bureaucratic obstacles,
largely caused by French officials refusing to aid or defer to Vietnamese
jurisdiction. Although relief efforts continued, confidential Democratic
Republic of Vietnam records recorded at least 11,458 deaths from starvation
as a result of the August floods.[111]
 Vietnamese children pouring rice porridge into the mouth of their father.[112]

It was not until June 1946 that the threat of mass famine began to
dissipate, aided by good weather and a plentiful summer harvest. Finally, in
November 1946, the north enjoyed a bountiful rice crop and the danger of
mass famine had all but vanished.[113]
Opinions about the primary cause of the famine vary among historians,
however, it is universally agreed that a triumvirate of consequences from
French colonization, Japanese imperialism, and natural disaster combined to
make the famine the catastrophe that it was. The next chapter will examine
the different influences and their impact on the famine, as well as the legacy
that the famine left on Vietnam and its people and how it is studied and
remembered today.
 Examining the Causes and
Influences that Led to the
Famine

Geography

It is important to understand some of the geographical context of the famine

and the way it was distributed. There was a clear disparity between the rural
areas’ experience of the famine and that of the cities and towns—Tonkin and
northern Annam’s rural villagers felt the famine ‘earlier and more severely’
than those in larger areas.[114] The drops in harvest output from 1942-1944
were highly localized. These drops were concentrated in eight coastal
provinces, five in the Tonkin delta and three in North Annam. These
provinces were not necessarily the most densely populated, but according to
Huff, the existence of a strong correlation between drops in output and
coastal provinces are indicative of the significance of natural disasters in
catalyzing the famine.[115] The crops of the coastal provinces were afflicted
with typhoons, a tidal wave, and floods, and Huff posits that famine might
have been avoided or assuaged had these crops not been damaged.[116]
However, the geographic distribution of the viable rice that was
harvested also played a role. Requisitions from the French and Japanese
were disproportionately distributed to people in Vietnam’s larger cities. A
meager amount of rice was rationed out to residents, but much of it was
stockpiled by the French and Japanese for their own potential emergency use
in the future.[117] Marr suggests that Tonkin’s 1944 output of 1.68 million tons
of paddy, if fairly distributed, would have provided each of its 9,851,000
residents with 171 kilograms of rice, which might have been enough
sustenance to survive until the June 1945 harvest.[118] Instead, rural villagers
were largely left to their own devices. The levy rice that the French collected
during their regime was largely distributed to cities, which Huff directly
states as a reason why urbanites’ experience of the famine was ameliorated
compared to their rural counterparts.[119]
Even after the March 9 coup, when Japanese officials distributed some of
the paddy from captured French stockpiles, the majority of it was allocated
to residents of urban areas.[120] The Japanese takeover overturned a French
policy blocking access to the major urban areas of Hanoi and Haiphong,
leading to the abandonment of many police barricades at city entrances. This
greatly increased the flow of destitute rural villagers—at least, those who
had survived this far—who had heard legends of abundance in areas outside
of their villages.[121] They would wander main roads, begging for aid, but
were given little, even from the more privileged Vietnamese. Author Tran
Van Mai documented facets of this disparity, writing about the experience of
attending an urban market during Tet (the Lunar New Year) at the height of
the famine:

“The customers in the wine shop talked about the New Year
market and about starvation. To season their tales, they drank
several cups of wine apiece to go with their ham, boiled
chicken, roast pork, or hot bowls of noodle soup… They
conversed in deep measured tones and laughed happily.
Meanwhile, the hungry, who had risked their lives robbing
food in the market, were being dragged back to this same area
and were there tied up with their arms twisted behind them
around the pillars of the shop. Now and then a customer
would stand up and point a finger at them, yelling insults;
‘The best thing to do would be to have you bums beaten to
death.’”[122]
About the Allocation of Blame

There is no single, simple explanation for why the famine happened, or why
it reached the levels of devastation that it did. According to Gunn, the
Japanese shredded documents to avoid blame, and the French official
records went ‘blank’ after the Japanese coup.[123] One of the few firsthand
Vietnamese perspectives on the famine that has been translated into English
comes from Tran Van Mai, who calls the causes ‘deep and complicated.’ In
his account, he presents an objective perspective on the event, but says that
he believes ‘these things will suffice for the reader to judge for himself the
total situation.’[124]
When Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in September 1945, he cited both French and
Japanese actions directly, stating: “From [1940] our people were subjected
to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and
miseries increased. The result was that from the end of last year to the
beginning of this year, from Quang Tri province to the North of Vietnam,
more than two million of our fellow-citizens died from starvation.”[125]
However, Marr (an American historian who served in the U.S. Marine
Corps during the Vietnam War) believes that survivors of disasters such as
famine want to allocate blame[126] and names French colonial authorities as
the primary targets of Vietnamese ire. There is substantial evidence to
corroborate Marr’s claim here. For example, Mai, writing in 1956, states
that the French had used ‘scientific methods’ to create a devastating famine in
order to ensure that the Vietnamese people could not revolt, as they had
witnessed growing national liberation movements and increased pressure
from Japanese imperial authorities, and felt their position in Indochina was
compromised.[127] Long, translating Mai in the 1970s, says that this was the
perspective of most Vietnamese, even at the time of his writing. However, he
adds the caveat that historical evidence shows that the French were uncertain
of their own future and took precautionary measures, such as rice hoarding,
to protect themselves. While he does not deny the role this played in creating
the famine, he seems to dispel the notion that it was a meticulously calculated
plan on their part. Additionally, a few months after declaring DRV
independence, Minh published an article in the Viet Minh periodical Báo
Cứu Quốc that pinned starvation on the French, writing (in Vietnamese):
“Because of the cruel policies of the French colonialists, such as forcing the
harvest of rice, forcing the cultivation of jute, etc., in the first few months of
this year more than two million compatriots in the North died of
starvation.”[128]
Pieces of this narrative seem to persist in contemporary Vietnam. A 2019
article published in the Vietnam law periodical Pháp luật outlines the
influence of Japanese occupation and natural disasters on the famine in
addition to French colonialism, but ultimately seems to place the brunt of the
blame on the French.[129] The article ends with a condemnation of the French
colonists’ reported denial of their responsibility for the famine. According to
Anh, French colonists claimed that there remained enough rice to prevent
widespread hunger until the March 9 Japanese coup. The French government
claimed to be ‘determined to take strict measures against speculative
activities with the intention of keeping the granaries to sell to the people to
prevent the price of rice from skyrocketing,’ but that the coup had prevented
that intention from coming to fruition.[130]
There seems to be little to no evidence that this claim was effective at
redirecting Vietnamese ire. The author of an article published in the April 28,
1945 issue of the Hanoi periodical Viet-Nam Tan Bao had this to write:
 “When we passed through areas that had once seen rice and
potatoes growing in abundance and had been thriving with
activity, all we could see now were dry paddy fields and
people who were weak and tired. Why was there this
desolation? Because no sooner did the population grow the
crops than the government took most of it away. Because the
population had been so hungry that their strength had wasted
away and they could not continue working.”[131]

In contrast, Marr notes that the Japanese have historically received much less
vilification, which he attributes to the fact that people knew the French had
administrative control for the vast majority of the famine’s onset.[132] He
additionally theorizes that Japan’s culpability may have been ameliorated by
the highly-publicized grants of grain to famine victims after the coup.
Vietnam’s Emperor Bảo Đại and his cabinet, established on April 17, 1945,
also evaded condemnation, as they were perceived to be fairly weak against
colonial and imperial forces, however, they did receive some credit for
attempting to end the Japanese system of obligatory rice sales early in the
summer.[133]
Mai is correct, though, in stating the complexity of the causes that led to
the famine—some factors played a larger role than others, but each is worth
a nuanced examination. The subsequent sections of this chapter aim to
provide that.
About the Impact of Natural Disasters and Agricultural Fallout

There is no denying that uncontrollable forces, including the aforementioned

poor weather and natural disasters, aided in creating the conditions for the
famine and its mass casualties. However, historians seem to be in unanimous
agreement that governments could have largely—perhaps even entirely—
prevented the catastrophe. For this reason, it is more worthwhile to focus on
the steps taken (or lack thereof) by people who could have taken action.
The French Role in the Famine

As mentioned previously, the French colonial regime had shouldered much of

the blame for the famine. Northern Vietnamese peasants never had plentiful
quantities of food under the colonial administration, and regardless of their
direct actions during the 1944-45 period, many Vietnamese people
apportioned blame to them due to the effects of their colonial regime that had
created the conditions for the famine to occur in the first place.
The geographical circumstances of the region meant that Vietnam
maintained a delicate balance of food supply, with the north often relied on
imports from the bountiful south.[134] However, food scarcity did not always
result in famine—amid the 1936-37 agrarian crisis, the French government
had actively aided the northern Vietnamese in staving off famine by
mobilizing rice shipments from Cochinchina.[135] At this point, Tonkin’s
provincial government saw the potential for famine as a persistent danger
and devised a plan for ‘‘Création des offices de l’alimentation indigène
[Creation of indigenous food offices]’, which would have enabled the region
to stockpile rice and fortified comprehensive relief measures. However, it
was shut down by French colonial officials, who claimed that rice could
always be transported to the north by rail if a truly dire situation were to
arise.[136]
This delicate balance—and the French government’s willingness to help
—was upset by World War II. Huff names four French actions that make them
partially culpable for the 1944-45 famine.[137] The first was a French ban on
inter-provincial trade, which put a moratorium on the south-north rice
shipments that had proven vital for the northern peasants’ sustenance. The
second was the imposition of a myriad of bureaucratic forms and restrictions
on flows of rice, which further stifled the possibility of transporting rice to
famine-affected areas. Third were the French regulations that stipulated 85
percent of rice cargo was to be sold at an official price, with only 15 percent
at the disposal of junk owners. These conditions dissuaded junk owners from
undertaking northbound voyages, which had become increasingly dangerous
due to American bombs and mines.
During this time, the civilian economy in Vietnam had rapidly
deteriorated, creating an environment where big landlords and wholesale
grain merchants often worked in conjunction with corrupt government
officials and black market operations were more prevalent than legal
transactions.[138] The price of rice rose exponentially between 1943 and May
1945, and even secondary crops such as corn and yams became incredibly
expensive or simply disappeared from the market altogether. For a working-
class family in Hanoi, the first three months of 1945 saw a 373 percent
increase in the cost of food and wages did not keep up in accordance. The
last reason Huff posits is a 1944 increase in a rice levy that the French
imposed on farmers, from 130,000 tons in 1943 to 186,000.[139] In 1943,
peasants in the south had already been forced to sell their surpluses to the
French government[140] which exacerbated the consequences of the shortage
that occurred during the rough winter of 1944-45. However, Huff admits that
the levy’s enforcement was questionable,[141] as the devastated civilian
economy had made levy prices so low that peasants would have resisted
delivering it, and the poor harvest would have made it difficult to collect on
the levy. Even when they were aware of the famine, officials made no moves
to lighten the burden on Vietnamese peasants, and they continued to leverage
the colonial system against them. According to Marr, the system “still struck
fear into the hearts of most subjects, causing them to obey rules even at grave
personal cost.”[142] Farmers who could not provide enough rice were forced
to purchase it at the astronomical black-market price and sell it to the
government for a nominal price or face the consequence of being sent to
work on a forced labor project far from their home.
However, the French were not willing to let the blame lie solely with
them. On September 12, 1945—only ten days after the DRV declared their
independence—the French countered allegations of their responsibility for
the 1945 famine by the way of broadcasts over their national radio.[143] They
provided four major counterarguments: first, they stated that it had been
under Japanese occupation that rice was massively requisitioned and stocks
ran down. Second, they said that war had destroyed the transportation system
that could have allowed fairer distribution of what rice the region possessed.
Third, they blamed the Japanese push to plant jute, vanilla and peanuts for
diminishing the area available for rice cultivation. Fourth, they argued that a
Japanese pillage of large estates had caused a 200,000-ton deficit in the rice
harvest of October 1944. They claimed that, up until the March 9 coup, they
had worked “assiduously” to get rice to famine-afflicted Tonkin, but that
under the duress of the military takeover, they could not be expected to
complete the duties that had been delegated to the Japanese and nascent
independent Vietnamese officials. They cited the fact that the famine reached
a critical point in April 1945, after the coup, as evidence in their favor.
A postwar French report noted that after the deficit from the October
1944 harvest, the Vichy French administration had indeed built up reserve
stocks in each province, but blamed the Japanese for drawing on these stocks
for their own self-serving reasons.[144] It claimed that a threatened, weakening
Japan had removed rice stocks and thrown them into the Mekong River. The
French also turned blame onto the “provisional” DRV government, who they
claim had hampered French government assistance in Red River Delta
regions and indeed aggravated disorder and social unrest.
 While this may have at least helped to dissipate the belief that the famine
was a political move intentionally fostered by the French, many Vietnamese
people (and even non-Vietnamese scholars writing about the famine)
continue to apportion blame to their apathy. As the Vietnamese-born author
Huynh Kim Khánh writes, “The reactions of Vietnam’s colonial leaders to the
famine would have made cynics of the most politically innocent. For all its
solicitude in courting the Vietnamese elite, the Decoux regime showed an
unconcern verging on callous contempt for the Vietnamese as humans. It did
nothing to help the famine victims.”[145]
The truth, as it often does, seems to lie somewhere in the middle. French
official Paul Chauvet comes closest out of all the recorded perspectives on
the famine to find this middle ground, explaining that he regretted “the true
nature of our preoccupations such as expressed by the heads of
administrative services in not having been able to recognize earlier on and
[even having] been privy through secondary considerations [the need to meet
the shortfall in rice],” but continuing, “once the Indochina Council made the
decision to quickly redress the penury of rice, then new attempts were made
to achieve this goal.”[146] In his analysis, Chauvet seems to own up to some of
the administration’s shortcomings, but still offloads the majority of the blame
onto others’ shoulders in their unwillingness to accept or collaborate in
French relief efforts, making it seem as though their complicity in the tragedy
was more a matter of helplessness than the overt evil that they were often
accused of.
Imperial Japan’s Role

The Japanese government and military have historically received less blame
for the famine due to the timing of their takeover. However, several
historians believe that they had the capacity to do more to avoid (or at least
lessen) the tragedy than the French and therefore, in their inaction, deserve
more of the onus.
Even before the coup, notes Huff, the Japanese controlled rice exports
and therefore had the power to manage decisions in Vietnam.[147] Since the
early years of World War II, Japan had been shipping large quantities of
Vietnamese rice to themselves, but this in and of itself had not created the
famine. However, they had also forced the planting of non-rice crops in
Tonkin and Annam to fulfill the needs of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere, which placed them at the center of a largely self-sufficient East and
Southeast Asia. According to Huff,[148] if the land that had been used for non-
rice crops between 1942 and 1944 had instead been used for rice, this could
have produced 1,792 extra tons of rice in Annam and 18,600 tons in Tonkin.
Of course, there is no guarantee that this much rice could or would have been
harvested—these numbers represent the upper boundaries—and, even with
such an addition, the famine might still have happened, but it nonetheless
contributed to the tragedy.
Unlike many historical analyses of the famine, Bui Minh Dung squarely
places the majority of the blame on the Japanese.[149] Dung argues the
insignificance of many of the suggested causes, stating that the existence of
multiple causes does not preclude the analysis of the relative impact each
one had on the famine. First, he argues against the idea that a permanent
subsistence crisis existed in the famine-afflicted regions, an idea that
insinuates that even the slightest of worsened conditions would have killed
the northern Vietnamese peasants, stating that if this were true, modern
Vietnam would still be known for mass starvation. He then argues against the
notion of bad weather as a foremost cause of the famine, which is what
General Tsuchihashi Yuichi, who helmed the Japanese occupation army in
1944, claimed. The worst flooding and harvest came in the fall of 1945, after
the famine had already peaked, demonstrating that weather was not, in fact,
the determining factor in the people’s survival. While Dung acquiesces that
the French regime certainly contributed to the famine in their rice hoarding
and contributions to the destruction of the civilian economy (though he claims
inflation actually hurt city dwellers, relatively few of whom suffered deaths
from starvation, more than the rural peasants), he also states that they served
as a check against Japanese ‘excesses’. Lastly, he argues against the
significance of Allied bombing, which damaged the transport systems that
could have transported rice to the famine-afflicted north in exacerbating the
famine. General Tsuchihashi named the “disintegration” of the system as one
of the two main causes of the famine, however, the Japanese had continued
using it “considerably” on the grounds of military precedence, proving that it
could not have been as destroyed as Tsuchihashi claimed. Marr states that by
early 1945, the Japanese were using two-thirds of all rail capacity for the
sake of their military.[150]
Instead, Dung posits that the Japanese economic policies that served to
benefit their status within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, as
well as their military actions “systematically played a role considerably
greater” than any others.[151] Japanese officials believed that exploiting
resources in French Indochina would be of economic benefit to their country,
so they began importing supplies such as rice, raw cotton, rubber, vegetable
oil, coal, and metal ores as early as the beginning of the twentieth century.[152]
By the early 1940s, the Delegation of Foreign Ministry for the investigation
of resources had turned their interest towards the potential of agroforestry
resources, at which point extensive forced crop conversion policies were
enacted. The Japanese had found Tonkin in particular to have great potential
for growing crops that they desired, such as tung oil, jute, and hemp, and they
forced Tonkinites to use much of what had been land for rice crops for these
resources.
It has been reported that it was in fact French authorities who imposed
this change of crops and that the changes were necessary for Indochinese
consumption.[153] Dung refutes this, stating that crop conversion was
decidedly not geared towards the needs of Tonkin’s indigenous people and
that the French were largely acting on the orders of the Japanese officials that
had occupied the region. He also calls into question the assertions that the
crop shifts had a marginal or unimportant effect on Vietnamese farmers. In
1943, the year the Japanese enforced crop conversion policies on a large
scale, the area of rice cultivation in Tonkin was reduced from 1,487,000
hectares in 1941-42 to 1,386,000 hectares the next year.[154] The Japanese and
French both forcibly collected and hoarded rice in military depots throughout
1944, which certainly played a role in Vietnamese peasants’ food access, but
it seems as though much of the rice collected served primarily to meet
demands for rice exports to Japan. Dung even cites evidence that suggests the
French might have used some of their agricultural organizations to protect
both French and Vietnamese interests,[155] but there is little evidence to
provide any idea of the extent to which the French were actually looking out
for the Vietnamese. However, it is fairly clear that the Japanese and French’s
motivations and priorities in rice and grain collection began to diverge after
Vichy France fell, and Japan no longer appeared to be interested in
collaborating with a liberated France.
 Even after their March 9 coup, Imperial Japanese officials neglected to
address the famine (which was quickly approaching emergency proportions)
for at least two weeks, and when they did act, they mostly reaffirmed
draconian French policies such as compulsory rice sales.[156] While they did
release some grain from French depots that they had captured, perhaps as a
strategic move to gain favor with the native population and keep up the
appearance that they wanted to support Vietnamese independence, that grain
was largely apportioned to urbanites and the Japanese continued the forcible
extraction of rice through the worst of the famine and until their surrender in
September 1945.
The Consequences and Aftermath

Despite Marr’s belief that famine survivors sought to find someone to blame,
it is perhaps futile for historians, particularly Western academics, to
[157]

focus scholarship on pointing fingers as opposed to studying the Vietnamese

perspective and the legacy the famine left on natives. A Vietnamese verse
from the time of the famine, quoted by Khánh sums up this tension well:

Nhat cuoi, Tay khoc, Tau lo;

Viet Nam Doc lap chet co day duong.

(The Japanese laugh, the French weep, the Chinese worry; Independent
Vietnamese curl up and die all over the streets.)[158]

As Khánh puts it, during the winter and spring of 1944-45, the French were
nursing their political wounds, Japan was focused on their waning power
amid growing anti-Japanese sentiment worldwide, and the small minority of
educated Vietnamese in urban centers were hunting for power, as millions in
rural areas were struggling for mere survival.[159]
Total Devastation: Statistics of the Estimated Deaths

In the DRV Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Minh calculated that the

1944-45 famine resulted in 2 million deaths, and this figure was taken as fact
by many at the time. However, in recent years, this number has come to be
generally regarded as too high. One official report from the French Centre
des Archives d’Outre-Mer provides a figure of 1.3 million, however, Huff
notes that there is no information on how the figure was derived.[160] Marr
names a much lower number, around one million deaths, a ‘more credible
estimate.’[161] Regardless of this, the implications are atrocious: one million
people was about 10% of Tonkin’s population at the time. It would have been
incredibly difficult, perhaps even impossible, to garner an accurate count of
the death toll, as many people fled rural areas and died in or on the way to
larger cities. By 1945 in Hanoi, famine victims were dying by the hundreds
every single day. Facing a lack of land and time to care for each victim’s
body individually, survivors had to bury corpses en masse in shallow
graves.
Moves Towards Independence and the Rise of the Viet Minh

The devastation caused by the famine played an undeniable role in paving the
way for revolution and the Viet Minh’s rise to power. In concert with the
Japanese coup and weakened view of the French as they transitioned away
from the Vichy administration, the Viet Minh was able to use the famine to
their political advantage in that no other party or authority was offering
alleviation from the suffering or a genuine path to independence. The famine
was integral to the Vietnamese revolution in that it created a ‘sense of
desperation’ necessary to provide an opportunity to enrage—and
subsequently mobilize—rural peasants.[162]
By early 1945, the French administration was well aware of the threat of
the Viet Minh exploiting the crisis. In February 1945, the first recorded
example of Viet Minh print propaganda popped up in the reading room of the
Bibliotheque Pierre Pasquier, a call to action asking the student population to
rise up.[163] Although they made attempts to dissipate the growing discontent
in these early months before the Japanese coup, such as lessening paddy
levies, relinquishing some of the area provided to the Japanese for forced
crop cultivation, and attempting to stop further increases in the price of rice,
it was to little avail.
[164]

Meanwhile, the Japanese had shifted their alliance away from France
after the Vichy administration fell and began collaborating with the Viet
Minh, supplying them with—including some seized from the French after the
coup—and even fighting alongside and cohabitating with indigenous
Vietnamese.[165] However, the Viet Minh knew not to rely on the Japanese.
Under the facade of encouraged independence, astute Vietnamese wondered
if they were being given a chimera[166] as the unity between the Japanese and
Vietnamese seemed to be contingent on loyalty to the hierarchical order, and
rebellion would be ‘severely punished in conformity with military
discipline’, according to a proclamation from General Tsuchihashi in April
1945.[167] Regardless of this, Vietnamese communists saw this time as their
best opportunity to make strides towards independence and continued
plotting their own agenda during the time between the March coup and the
August Revolution.
Dung provides a clear example of their strategy in a recounting of their
response to continued forcible rice extraction.[168] When a group of Japanese
soldiers and Vietnamese ‘security troops’ employed by the Japanese came to
the famine-afflicted Bac-Ninh province in July 1945 to ensure a transport of
rice to the provincial capital, villagers rose up to blockade them, and a Viet
Minh group was able to convince the security troops to side with their own
and aid in defeating the Japanese. However, the provincial committee leader
considered it unwise to allow the people to wipe out the Japanese soldiers
and directed an unarmed demonstration.
We might surmise that this was a strategy to avoid suspicion from the
Japanese, not allowing them to know truly how powerful and potentially
dangerous the Viet Minh had become before they were ready for a large-
scale attack. It was to their benefit to stay under the radar at this point, as
Japan was largely preoccupied defending their position in the war, too busy
to give much thought to Vietnamese activity. Khánh believes that the five
months between the coup and revolution were ‘the most important period’ in
the history of the party, and they were focused on expanding their influence
among the populace and strengthening their forces.[169] Within three months of
the coup, Viet Minh forces essentially controlled the mountain regions and
executed guerrilla attacks on the Japanese—ambushing convoys, cutting
roads, attacking military posts—until their eventual surrender. This garnered
a positive and powerful reputation for the Viet Minh, giving them an air of
political prestige as the sole Vietnamese political collective that dared to
attack the Japanese.[170]
Their political mobilization, though, became even more powerful than
their military forces during this time. More than anyone realized at the time,
society in Tonkin and northern Annam had been irreparably disrupted by the
famine, and their outrage towards the administrations who had imposed these
conditions upon them and then refused them aid left them wide open to Viet
Minh exhortations. More than anything else, though, Marr writes, “they
wished to avoid yet another encounter with starvation later in the year, if
necessary by taking matters into their own hands” (Vietnam 1945, 150).[171]
Initially, the famine had hurt revolutionary mobilization, as some Viet Minh
members also became victims in the name of trying to stay connected to the
masses, and others began to neglect the party due to hunger. They realized
quickly, though, the opportunity the famine gave them to give people political
consciousness. As the famine was setting in during the late fall of 1944, the
party began to release propaganda with the slogan “Destroy the granaries,
solve the danger of the famine!”[172]
 Ho Chi Minh with members of the American Office of Strategic Services, 1945.[173]

The Viet Minh’s calls to oppose levy collections, to demand the

distribution of grain stocks hoarded by the French and Japanese, or even to
‘liberate’ the grain themselves by force, were well-received by villagers
between March and May 1945. Before they were able to build up their
weapons stock and military force, the party encouraged the people to perform
unarmed actions, such as painting propaganda on public buildings or
organizing marches to call for immediate famine relief from the government.
Some went as far as to carry out those forceful liberations of grain, breaking
into rice stockpiles or violently compelling guards to provide them access to
grain. While it is unknown exactly how much grain was liberated by the Viet
Minh’s actions, an ‘urgent’ June 12 message from the provincial chief to
Hanoi that reported the pillaging of stockpiled paddy shows that it was
enough to cause concern among the existing administration.[174] While not
necessarily advertised as such, the famine also bolstered the Viet Minh’s
recruitment efforts in that many unemployed and otherwise destitute young
men from famine-stricken areas and families saw joining the group as a
guaranteed way to at least ensure themselves a daily ration of rice.[175]
A series of events early in August 1945 provided the Viet Minh with the
opportunity to finally seize power in what would come to be known as the
August Revolution. On August 6, the United States detonated an atomic bomb
on Hiroshima. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. On
August 10, Japan offered to surrender. When this news reached Vietnam on
August 13, the Viet Minh called upon the Vietnamese people and those in the
Vietnamese Liberation Army to attack the cities and areas of importance to
Japan, block their ability to escape, and disarm them.[176] During the middle
of the month, all of Vietnam seemed to be caught in political uproar.
Demonstrations and rallies raged in urban areas, administrative centers, and
provincial seats of power, and Viet Minh flags, propaganda, slogans, and
songs became ubiquitous. Under these conditions, Khánh writes, “power
simply fell into Viet Minh hands.”[177] On August 30, Bảo Đại formally
abdicated and relinquished power to the Viet Minh, and only three days later
came Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence and the country’s
establishment as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
 The Viet Minh during the August Revolution.[178]

A year after the August Revolution, Vietnamese communist leader Truong

Chinh directly accredited the campaign against the famine as the turning point
for the Viet Minh’s rise to power, writing:
“Hundreds of thousands of our people lay dying next to Japanese and
French granaries which were filled to the top. At the time, the essential task
was the leadership of the masses for armed attacks on the Japanese granaries
and the French colonialists’ plantations, stocking all kinds of agricultural
products. The Communist and Viet Minh cadres did grasp and solve this
problem, causing the vast masses, either organized or unorganized, to
participate eagerly in the movement against the Japanese. The more they
participated in these activities, the more they saw the hideous face of the
enemy and felt their own strength. It was thanks precisely to the attacks
against the granaries and the plantations that the national salvation movement
developed in an effervescent way.”[179] According to Khánh, the Viet Minh’s
detractors lacked the political vision and strategy that the party had, stating
that even years later, many struggle to truly see the political implications of
the famine and to comprehend just how Communists were able to turn the
tragedy into a self-serving political instrument—while also ensuring that
their people were fed.[180]
Conclusion: The Long-Term Effects and Legacy of the 1944-45 Vietnam
Famine

Although the famine was irrefutably a massive tragedy, very little

documentation or accounts of the famine and its casualties exist today,
particularly outside of the Vietnamese language. There are no available
statistics about the losses that individual provinces or towns suffered, much
less any demographic breakdowns. Even having them, though, would never
be enough to sufficiently measure the psychological effects that the famine
had on survivors or their descendants. As Marr writes, “The sounds of
lamentation among starving compatriots, the sight of bodies strewn alongside
rural roads and hedges, or encountered each morning on city sidewalks,
continued to haunt several generations in northern and north-central
Vietnam.”[181] Even without major historical coverage outside of Vietnam
until recent years, this event clearly continued to scar the Vietnamese people
for decades.
In the nearly eight decades since the famine, though, there have been
several attempts to recover and learn as much about the event and its long-
term effects. In what Gunn refers to as a “truth-seeking exercise,” Japanese
scholar Futura Motoo collaborated with a Vietnamese research team between
1992 and 1995 to conduct a retrospective mortality analysis of the famine
through household surveys and interviews conducted in northern Annam and
Tonkin.[182] Through their research, they found that economic factors had
sharply separated the fate of families, as land-owning peasants tended to
mitigate the effects of the famine, while the death rate for landless peasants
climbed as high as 53.3 percent.[183]
 However, the collection of statistics can only provide so much
understanding of the tragedy. Oral histories collected since 1945 have
provided a clearer, harrowing perspective on the minutiae of life under the
worst of the famine’s conditions. For instance, Vietnamese poet Bang Ba Lan
provides an eyewitness account in “Doi, Doi ‘They starved, They starved]”:

“Along all highways famished bodies moaned,

lying curled up in the sun, in dust and filth.
Amidst those rags the hollow eyes alone
still harbored sparks of soul soon to go out.
And day by day, toward cities, toward Hanoi
more corpses, yet more corpses dragged themselves,
bringing the trail of flies, the stench of smells,
then crumbled down along some street or lane.
At dawn you’d gingerly push your door ajar
To check if there was someone dead outside.”[184]

Another eyewitness, Tran Van Mai, told a story of a young family in his
village where the parents were forced to choose between saving themselves
at the expense of their three beloved children, or slowly allowing all of them
to waste away:

“From that day on, the couple ate alone and no longer divided
the food up for the children. The children, being so hungry,
would charge in on their parents’ table whenever the latter sat
down to eat and would grab at the food. Mr. Vuoc would beat
them off and drive them out into the streets, allowing them to
come back only at night to sleep. Sometimes they would
 return home after having roamed around the village, so hungry
and tired they could walk no further. However, even then, if
there was any food around the house, their father would, to
their dismay, have to tie them up at the house posts lest they
cause any trouble.”[185]

More contemporary eyewitness accounts demonstrate the ways experiencing

the famine affected survivors throughout their lives, for instance, the story of
Mrs. Nguyen Thi Sot, interviewed by Vietnamese publication VnExpress in
2015:

“There were 8 people in my family, 5 of them died… I was

only 17 years old that year, in my youth, but only skin and
bones remained. Many people were starving their whole
body, unable to distinguish between a woman and a man.
People stole all the patched clothes on the body of a pregnant
woman about to give birth in exchange for a piece of cake to
eat.”[186]

A study of the famine would inevitably call into question assumptions about
human morality and behavior. Of course, one could ask how a person could
decidedly chain their children up to prevent them from eating or steal clothes
off of an expectant mother’s body, but on the other hand, how could the
authorities deprive people of enormous stockpiles of grain, and continue to
do so as hundreds of thousands died before their eyes? How could urbanites
watch rural villagers pour into the city and turn their noses up, rather than
provide whatever aid they could?
 There is an important but understated reason to ask these questions and
study atrocities such as this famine, particularly outside of the Western
world. Westernized education tends to teach a very unilateral perspective of
the Western world in World War II, amplifying the heroic aspects and
downplaying the crimes and casualties. However, as these countries,
particularly European imperialist powers, nursed their political and
militaristic wounds, many nations across Africa and Asia seized the
opportunity to build decolonial movements. Weakened European powers,
lacking wealth and political clout, could do little to suppress nationalist
uprisings happening continents away. This era of mass decolonization tends
to be a mere paragraph or so in Western history textbooks, leaving the
majority of the population generally ignorant about the movement. By
ignoring the horrific ramifications of imperialism and colonization before
and during (and even after) World War II, we lack the understanding of the
legacies they left that continue to haunt the victims of such atrocities and their
descendants. Such Eurocentric histories also help in creating conditions that
prevent future historians, especially those with a Westernized education,
from thinking critically about events, and subsequently from ever fully
rectifying historical wrongs.
Nevertheless, there is also a very practical, pressing need to ask these
questions, to remember the history of this famine—as recently as 1988,
Hanoi sought emergency aid for acute rice shortages “in many localities” and
starvation in the former Ha Son Binh province, which was in northern
Vietnam (Crossette, ‘Hanoi Seeks Emergency Aid’).[187] According to
Crossette, the Vietnamese press and radio reports at the time blamed weather
conditions, depleted soil, and political and economic mismanagement for the
food crisis. Crossette also claims that there was evidence that people in the
rice-growing areas of the south were hoarding rice instead of selling it. In
response, the United States reportedly claimed that they were ‘skeptical’ of
famine reports from Vietnam, as they believed them to be veiled requests for
unnecessary aid.
Luckily, by 1990, the country had transformed its agricultural system.
Toward the end of the twentieth century, Vietnam became one of the largest
rice exporters in the world.[188] However, the fact that the region came so
close to another agrarian devastation at the hands of almost the same causes
that left a million people dead just 40 years before reveals the overtly
dangerous possibility of historical tragedies repeating themselves when they
go largely unreported. Acknowledging atrocities and understanding their
causes, course, and effects is the key to both respecting atrocity victims and
preparing for the future. As climate change and an increasingly tense political
climate continue to plague nations once ravaged by imperialism and
colonialism, understanding events like the Vietnam Famine of 1944-1945 is
crucial in deepening the current understanding of the multiple causes of
atrocities in order to prevent them in the future.
 Please leave us a 5 stars review on
Amazon if you enjoyed the book:

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LS
 Notes

[1] Gregg Huff, “Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine, 1944-5,” Economic
History Review, 00, 0 (2018), p. 1.

[2] Cahit Guven, Trung Hoang, Muhammad H. Rahman, Mehmet A. Ulubaşoğlu, “Long-term effects
of malnutrition on early-life famine survivors and their offspring: New evidence from the Great
Vietnam Famine 1944-45,” Health Economics 30, Issue 7, p. 1600.

[3] Rijuta Vallishayee, The Two Primary Deltas of Vietnam, map graphic, 2021.

[4] The Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945) was the final dynasty of Vietnamese monarchs. Gia Long was
the first emperor of the dynasty, having defeated the previous Tay Son Dynasty and declared
himself emperor in 1802.
Ben Kiernan, Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017), p. 263.

[5] J. F. Le Coq., M. Dufumier and G. Trébuil, “History of rice production in the Mekong Delta,” The
Third Euroseas Conference (London, 2001), p. 5.

[6] Le Coq, Dufumier, and Trebuil, “History of rice production in the Mekong Delta,”, p. 3.

[7] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 319.

[8] John F. Laffey, “Land, Labor and Law in Colonial Tonkin Before 1914,” Historical Reflections /
Réflexions Historiques, vol. 2, no. 2 (1976), p. 223. www.jstor.org/stable/41298668.

[9] Tana Li, “A Historical Sketch of the Landscape of the Red River Delta,” Trans-regional and -
national studies of Southeast Asia 4, no. 2 (2016).

[10] Ibid.

[11] Hurley, M. M., Minh, L. D., Sterling, E. J. (2008). Vietnam: A Natural History. Ukraine: Yale
University Press.

[12] Ibid.
[13] Geoffrey C. Gunn, Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road
to Power (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 33.

[14] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 26.

[15] Ibid, p. 30.

[16] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 28.

[17] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 35.

[18] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 28.

[19] John F. Laffey, “Land, Labor and Law in Colonial Tonkin Before 1914,” ibid.

[20] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 209.

[21] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 36.

[22] Rijuta Vallishayee, A Rough Outline of the Divisions Between Tonkin, Annam, and
Cochinchina, map graphic, 2021.

[23] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 326.

[24] In addition to the three regions of Vietnam, French Indochina also included much of modern day
Cambodia and Laos, as well as parts of modern day China. “Map of Indochina Showing Proposed
Burma-Siam-China Railway,” Scottish Geographical Magazine (1886), ed. Hugh A. Webster
and Arthur S. White.

[25] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 56.

[26] William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (United Kingdom: Hachette Books, 2000), Chapter 1.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Nguyen Ai Quoc, “Revendications du Peuple Annamite” (1919).

[29] Louis Meurisse, Nguyen Aïn Nuä’C (Ho-Chi-Minh), délégué indochinois, Congrès
communiste de Marseille, 1921, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Gallica,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nguyen_A%C3%AFn_Nu%C3%A4%27C_(Ho-Chi-
Minh),_d%C3%A9l%C3%A9gu%C3%A9_indochinois,_Congr%C3%A8s_communiste_de_Mar
seille,_1921,_Meurisse,_BNF_Gallica.jpg.
[30] Irene Nørlund. “Rice and the Colonial Lobby: The Economic Crisis in French Indo-China in the
1920s and 1930s.” Weathering the Storm: The Economies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s
Depression, ed. Peter Boomgaard and Ian Brown (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, 2000), p. 198.

[31] Gunn, Rice Wars, pp. 86-87.

[32] Nørlund, “Rice and the Colonial Lobby,” p. 203.

[33] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 87.

[34] Huỳnh Kim Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1982), p. 103.

[35] Ibid, p. 93.

[36] Ibid, p. 95.

[37] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 364.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 129.

[40] Ibid, p. 59.

[41] Ibid, p. 179.

[42] Ibid, p. 153.

[43] Rijuta Vallishayee, Nghe Tinh, map graphic, 2021.

[44] Martin Bernal, “The Nghe-Tinh Soviet Movement 1930-1931,” Past & present, no. 92 (1981), p.
152.

[45] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 157.

[46] Bernal, “The Nghe-Tinh Soviet Movement,” p. 154.

[47] Ibid, p. 166.

[48] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 365.

[49] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 108.

[50] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 199.

[51] Ibid, p. 228.

[52] La Lutte, February 23 1935, 1935.

[53] Nørlund, “Rice and the Colonial Lobby,” p. 207.

[54] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 117.

[55] Ibid, p. 122.

[56] Cam Anh Tuan, “The Hải Phòng-Yunnan Railway: An Important Knot in French Indochina-
Japanese Relations during the Second World War,” in Vietnam-Indochina-Japan Relations
during the Second World War: Documents and Interpretations, ed. Masaya Shiraishi, Nguyễn
Văn Khánh, and Bruce M. Lockhart (Waseda University Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2017),
p. 256.

[57] Kiernan, Viet Nam, p. 376.

[58] Nguyễn Văn Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy toward Vietnam during World War II: Nature
and Consequences,” in Vietnam-Indochina-Japan Relations during the Second World War:
Documents and Interpretations, ed. Masaya Shiraishi, Nguyễn Văn Khánh, and Bruce M.
Lockhart (Waseda University Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2017), p. 239.

[59] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 133.

[60] Unknown, Japanese Advance to Lang Son. 1940.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Japanese_advance_to_Lang_Son1940.jpg.

[61] The Anh Nguyen. “Japanese Food Policies and the 1945 Great Famine in Indochina,” in Food
Supplies and the Japanese Occupation in South-East Asia, ed. Paul H. Kratsoka (Palgrave
Macmillan UK, 2016), p. 210.

[62] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[63] Sud Chonchirdsin, “The Indochinese Communist Party and the Nam Ky Uprising in Cochin China,
November-December 1940,” South East Asia Research 5, no. 3 (1997), pp. 272-273.

[64] Ibid, p. 278.

[65] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 150.

[66] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 253.

[67] Unknown, Cochinchina uprising (Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa) against the French in Saigon, 1940,
1940. https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/44919600194.

[68] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 134.

[69] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 239.

[70] Japanese Army, Japanese Troops Entering Saigon in 1941, 1941.

[71] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 134.

[72] Nguyen, “Japanese Food Policies,” p. 210.

[73] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[74] Nguyen, “Japanese Food Policies,” p. 214.

[75] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 257.

[76] Ibid, p. 260.

[77] Ibid, p. 264.

[78] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 136.

[79] Nguyen, “Japanese Food Policies,” p. 209.

[80] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 242.

[81] Nguyen, “Japanese Food Policies,” p. 212.

[82] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 243.

[83] Bùi Minh Dũng, “Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” Modern Asian Studies
29, no. 3 (1995), p. 591.

[84] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[85] Jean Lacouture, Peter Wiles, Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography (United States: Random
House, 1968), 78.

[86] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[87] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 136.

[88] Nguyen, “Japanese Food Policies,” p. 214.

[89] Ibid, p. 212.

[90] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[91] Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960 (Washington DC: Center
of Military History, 1985), p. 28.

[92] Huff, “Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine,” p. 20.

[93] Khánh, “Japanese Agricultural Policy,” p. 241.

[94] Huff, “Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine,” p. 9.

[95] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 272.

[96] Ibid, p. 273.

[97] Ibid, p. 276.

[98] Hoàng Văn Đức, Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietminh forces, 1944, 1944,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vo_Nguyen_Giap,_Vietminh_forces,_1944.jpg.

[99] Vĩnh Long Ngô, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants Under the French
(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1973), p. 122.

[100] Huff, ‘Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine’, p. 289.

[101] Sugata Bose, “Starvation Amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal, Honan and Tonkin,
1942-45,” Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 4 (1990), p. 701.

[102] Vo An Ninh, Famine in Vietnam, 1945, 1945, Museum of Vietnamese History, Hanoi,
http://www.thanhniennews.com/arts-culture/horrific-photos-recall-vietnamese-famine-of-1945-
37591.html.
[103] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 96.

[104] Huff, ‘Causes and consequences of the Great Vietnam Famine’, p. 292.

[105] Vo An Ninh, Famine in Vietnam, 1945, ibid.

[106] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 327.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid, p. 109.

[109] Ibid, p. 114.

[110] Ibid, p. 508.

[111] Ibid, p. 509.

[112] Vo An Ninh, Famine in Vietnam, 1945, ibid.

[113] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 644.

[114] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 101.

[115] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 630.

[116] Ibid.

[117] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 101.

[118] Ibid, p. 97.

[119] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 646.

[120] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 101.

[121] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 646.

[122] Long, Before the Revolution, pp. 234-35.

[123] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 246.

[124] Long, Before the Revolution, p. 221.

[125] Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works Vol. 3. (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960-62).

[126] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 106.

[127] Long, Before the Revolution, p. 221.

[128] Ho Chi Minh, “Visiting Professor Lectures on Photographer,” Hô Hào Nhân Dân Chống Nạn Đói
[Exhorting the People to Fight Hunger],” Báo Cứu Quốc [National Salvation Newspaper],
(Hanoi), Nov. 8, 1945.

[129] Minh Anh, “Nguồn cơn nạn đói kinh hoàng khiến gần 2 triệu người chết năm Ất Dậu,” Bao Phap
Luat, 12 December 2019, https://baophapluat.vn/nguon-con-nan-doi-kinh-hoang-khien-gan-2-
trieu-nguoi-chet-nam-at-dau-post325700.html.

[130] Ibid.

[131] Long, Before the Revolution, p. 132.

[132] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 106.

[133] Ibid.

[134] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines’, p. 627.

[135] Huff, ‘Causes and consequences,’ p. 290, 303.

[136] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines’, p. 644.

[137] Ibid.

[138] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 98.

[139] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines’, p. 644.

[140] Ibid, p. 629.

[141] Ibid, p. 645.

[142] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 97.

[143] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 247.

[144] Ibid.

[145] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 301.

[146] Quoted in Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 248.

[147] Huff, ‘Causes and consequences,’ p. 304.

[148] Ibid.

[149] Bùi Minh Dũng, “Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” Modern Asian Studies
29, no. 3 (1995), pp. 573-586.

[150] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 100.

[151] Ibid, p. 618.

[152] Ibid, p. 587.

[153] Ibid, pp. 589-90.

[154] Ibid, p. 592.

[155] Ibid, p. 608.

[156] Ibid, p. 101.

[157] Ibid, p. 106.

[158] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 301.

[159] Ibid, p. 299.

[160] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 621.

[161] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 104.

[162] Huff, ‘Vietnam and Java Famines,’ p. 651.

[163] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 190.

[164] Ibid, p. 191.

[165] Ibid, pp. 191-92.

[166] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 115.

[167] Ibid.

[168] Dung, ‘Japan’s Role,’ pp. 615-16.

[169] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 309.

[170] Ibid, p. 311.

[171] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 150.

[172] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 313.

[173] The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sent operatives to northern Vietnam in 1945, where they
worked with the Viet Minh. U.S. Army, Ho Chi Minh (third from left standing) and the OSS
in 1945, 1945,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ho_Chi_Minh_(third_from_left_standing)_and_the_OS
S_in_1945.jpg.

[174] Marr, Vietnam 1945, pp. 208-209.

[175] Ibid, p. 210.

[176] Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 322.

[177] Ibid, p. 324.

[178] Unknown, Viet Minh during August Revolution, 1945,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Viet_Minh_during_August_Revolution.jpg.

[179] Cach mang thang Tam, 25, quoted in Khánh, Vietnamese Communism, p. 314.

[180] Ibid, p. 315.

[181] Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 105.

[182] Gunn, Rice Wars, p. 248.

[183] Ibid.

[184] Quoted in Marr, Vietnam 1945, p. 137.

[185] ‘A father who abandoned his children’, translated in Long, Before the Revolution, pp. 246-50.

[186] Nhóm phóng viên [Reporters team], “Nạn Đói Năm 45 Trong Ký Ức Người Còn Sống [Famine
Year 45 in the Memory of the Living],” VnExpress, 13 Jan. 2015, http://vnexpress.net/nan-doi-
nam-45-trong-ky-uc-nguoi-con-song-3130491.html.

[187] Barbara Crossettes, “Hanoi, Citing Famine Fears, Seeks Emergency Aid,” The New York Times,
May 15. 1988.

[188] Keith B. Richburg, ‘Near Famine in ’88, Vietnam Now Exports Rice,’ The Washington Post,
April 19, 1990.
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