In the memory of the Vietnamese people, the Great Famine of 1945 remains a nightmare, a painful and unforgettable experience. This disaster began in October 1944 and lasted until mid-1945. The famine of 1945 caused about 2 million of our compatriots to die of starvation. The research work on the famine of 1945 by Professor Van Tao, former director of the Vietnam Institute of History, and Professor Furuta Moto from Japan has made this clear.
The policy of confiscating rice by the Japanese fascists and the French colonists at that time, along with natural disasters and crop failures in many provinces of the Northern Delta, were the direct causes of the tragedy. According to author Hoang Phuong, published in Vn Express, in October 1940, when they set foot in Indochina, the Japanese implemented a series of policies that targeted the economy, forcing the French colonists to sign many treaties, requiring the annual provision of food, and surrendering rice to the Japanese, prohibiting the transportation of food from the South to the North, restricting free transport, allowing only under 50 kilograms of rice to be transported within a province, and forcing people to uproot rice, plant ramie, and take land to grow peanuts.
While the Japanese were hoarding for war, the French were stockpiling food in case the Allied forces had to fight the Japanese or for the purpose of re-invading Vietnam. Taxes on land and agricultural production became nooses around the necks of farmers. In 1944, Vietnam faced crop failures, yet the French and the feudal government still had to provide over 900,000 tons of rice to the Japanese to sustain the fascist war and as raw materials for the French to make alcohol, along with rice used to fuel stoves instead of coal. Tens of thousands of acres of corn were destroyed, and millions of tons of rice were confiscated.
According to statistics, in 1940, the area of ramie was 5,000 hectares, but by 1944 it had increased to 45,000 hectares. The Japanese prohibited the transportation of rice from the South and hoarded rice in the North, causing rice prices to skyrocket. In 1943, the official price of 100 kilograms of rice was 31 dong, while the black market price was 57 dong. By 1944, it rose to 40 dong, with the black market price reaching 350 dong. However, by early 1945, the official price soared to 53 dong, while the black market price ranged from 700 to 800 dong. The exorbitant price of rice left the people unable to afford it, leading to starvation.
In September 1944, floods broke the La Giang dam in Ha Tinh and the Ca River dam in Nghe An, worsening the famine situation. According to those who experienced the horrific famine in Tay Luong, Tien Hai, Thai Binh, the 1944 harvest saw rice in vast fields destroyed by pests, turning white and yellow. Many fields could not yield even a few dozen kilograms of rice. The famine occurred in 32 provinces in the North and North Central regions from Quang Tri northward. The focal points were the delta provinces where the population was dense and there were many rice fields, such as Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Hai Phong, and Thanh Hoa.
The hunger spared no one. The focus was on the poor, the laborers, especially the landless farmers who worked as hired laborers and those with little land. To fight against hunger and the imminent death, people resorted to eating wild vegetables, banana roots, tree bark, and even slaughtering cattle, dogs, and cats. Fishermen ate wild taro and dead fish. When there was nothing left to eat, they sat waiting to die so that their families could take them for burial, or they died by the roadside while searching for food. Death came slowly, tragically, affecting both body and spirit. Hunger caused fathers to abandon children, husbands to leave wives, and human connections to break down; when begging for food failed, they resorted to theft.
In rural areas, thousands of families died together. Many clans had only a few survivors left. By May 1945, the famine reached its peak. People flocked to the cities in search of food. They sold their possessions to get money for the journey. The people of Hanoi at that time initiated a hunger relief day, setting up soup kitchens. Those on the brink of death were taken to the Giap Bat camp, while the dead were piled onto carts and dumped into pits like garbage at the Hoan Kiem cemetery. Today, it is known as the Two Ladies Temple.
Pastor Le Van Thai, former president of the Vietnam Evangelical Church from 1942 to 1960, wrote: "I often heard the moans of those about to die, saw piles of writhing flesh near the corpses. In this place, there were three or five corpses, while in another place, there were piles of living people mixed with the dead. On the ox carts filled with corpses, each cart was only covered with a mat. In the pits, hundreds of corpses were buried at once, with a few rotten vegetables in the trash, and a few grains of rice spilled beside the rice pot, they rushed in groups to fight for them."
Or as the author Vespy wrote in a letter in May 1945: "They walked in an endless line, including families. There were old people, children, men, and women. Each person was hunched over in poverty, their bodies emaciated and naked, with bones protruding and trembling. Even the adolescent girls, who should have been shy, were the same. Occasionally, they stopped to close the eyes of someone in their group who had fallen and would never rise again. Or to strip a ragged piece of cloth that could not be properly named to cover that person's body."
At the peak of the famine, on May 9, 1945, the Japanese staged a coup against the French. The Viet Minh Front called on the people to break into hundreds of Japanese rice warehouses to alleviate hunger. The movement took place vigorously everywhere, somewhat alleviating the famine. Farmers began to return to their villages to continue production. By the summer harvest, with new rice, living standards suddenly changed, causing many to die from overeating.
The environment was heavily polluted by unburied corpses, and after a long period of famine, cholera and jaundice outbreaks killed many more people in Bac Giang and Cao Bang. Many villages lost 50 to 80% of their population. Many families and clans had no survivors left. In Son Tho village, Thuy Anh commune, Thai Thuy, old Thai Binh, with more than 1,000 people, 956 died. In just five months, the number of people who died of starvation in the entire province reached 280,000, accounting for 1/4 of the population of Thai Binh. At that time, in Ha Son Binh province, the history of the old Ha Son Binh Party Committee clearly recorded that in the famine of 1945, about 80,000 people, or about 10% of the province's population, died of starvation.
In many places, villages were desolate and devastated, especially in areas where handicrafts were halted. In La Ca village, Hoai Duc, the number of people who died of starvation was over 2,000 out of 4,800 residents, with 147 families having no survivors. In La Khe village, with 2,100 people, 1,200 died of starvation, accounting for 57% of the population. In May 1945, seven months after the famine broke out in the North, the imperial commissioner in Hanoi ordered the northern provinces to report on the losses. Twenty provinces reported that the number of people who died from starvation and disease was 400,000, just counting the North. The research data in the book "The Famine of 1945 in Vietnam."
The historical evidence compiled by Professor Van Tao shows that in Thai Binh province, where the famine was most severe, the provincial history committee investigated. The relatively accurate figure is that the entire province lost 280,000 people to starvation. In Ninh Binh, 38,000 people died. In Ha Nam, 50,000 people died. And if we expand the figures, the number of 2 million Vietnamese who died of starvation in 32 provinces from Quang Tri northward and the two major cities of Hanoi and Hai Phong is close to the truth.
Comparing the famine of 1945 in Vietnam with the losses from the wars in France and Germany, President Ho Chi Minh pointed out that the famine was more dangerous than war. For example, in six years of war, France lost 1 million people, and Germany about 3 million. Yet, in just half a year of famine in our Northern region, over 2 million people died. After the National Day on September 2, President Ho Chi Minh raised six urgent issues that the government needed to address immediately.
And the number one issue was hunger relief. To alleviate hunger, many contemporary political organizations mobilized forces to intercept trucks or boats carrying rice transported by the Japanese from the South to the North to supply the people, while also securing a long-term reserve. That was the phase before. After September 0, 1945, the assets of the pro-Japanese French in the whole country were confiscated, and a campaign was launched to increase production and save food to assist the hungry. At the launch ceremony of the hunger relief movement held at the Hanoi Grand Theatre, President Ho Chi Minh contributed the rice he had saved from his own meals first.
Subsequently, the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also immediately implemented several specific measures such as allowing the transportation of rice, strictly punishing speculators and hoarders of rice, prohibiting the use of rice for non-essential activities such as making alcohol and baking, banning the export of rice, corn, and beans, and appointing a committee to oversee the transportation of rice from the South to the North. By the end of 1946, the famine had basically been resolved.