Vietnamese famine of 1944–1945

Famine in Vietnam during World War II that killed between 400,000 and 2,000,000 people

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Vietnamese Famine of 1944–45 Nạn đói Ất Dậu
Children in the famine
Country	French Indochina, Empire of Vietnam
Total deaths	400,000—2,000,000

The Vietnamese famine of 1944–45 (Vietnamese: Nạn đói Ất Dậu – famine of the Ất Dậu Year or Nạn đói năm 45 – the 1945 famine, due to most of the deaths came in 1945) was a famine that occurred in northern Vietnam in French Indochina during World War II from October 1944 to late 1945, which at the time was under Japanese occupation from 1940 with Vichy France as an ally of Nazi Germany in Western Europe. Between 400,000 and 2 million people are estimated to have starved to death during this time. The famine was caused by natural disasters, the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, the American government directing attacks on the transport system, and the country's French colonial administration.

Causes

A cause of the famine was the effects of World War II on French Indochina. The involvement of France and Japan in Vietnam caused detrimental effects to the economic activities of the Vietnamese. In 1944, after US bombing had cut off supplies of coal from the north to Saigon, the French and Japanese used rice and maize as fuel for power stations. According to the diplomat Bui Minh Dung, "the Japanese occupation of Vietnam was the direct cause, in the final analysis, of several other factors, in turn affecting the famine, but their military efforts together with their economic policy for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere per se seem to have systematically played a role considerably greater than any other factors in the Vietnamese starvation."

The mismanagement of the French administration in Vietnam was another cause. The French reformed the economy to serve the administration and to meet the needs of war, including the Japanese occupation. They imposed a compulsory system of government rice purchases with a price ceiling of 1.40 piastres for every 10 kilograms, which they continued paying even as the market rates soared from 2.50 to 3 piastres in 1943 to 6 to 7 in June 1944. It ballooned tenfold to 60-70 piastres the following year. This meant farmers could no longer afford to repurchase rice needed for new harvests or to feed themselves.

Natural causes included natural disasters such as droughts and floods, which destroyed northern crops.

The crop failures of 1943–1945 were compounded by lack of dike maintenance after the US bombing of the north and the catastrophic rainfall of August–September 1944, causing flooding and loss of rice plants.

French colonial administration

After the Great Depression in the 1930s, France returned to its policy of economic protectorate and monopolized the exploitation of natural resources of French Indochina. The people in French Indochina had to increase the economic value of the area by growing cash crops in place of lower-value agricultural produce, but only the French, a small minority of Vietnamese and the Hoa and some people in the cities benefited.

World War II

When the war started, France was weakened. In East Asia, Japan began to expand and viewed French Indochina as a bridge into Southeast Asia and a means to isolate and further weaken the Nationalist government of China. In mid-1940, Metropolitan France was occupied by Nazi Germany. Germany's Axis partner Japan then increased pressure on France and entered French Indochina that September. Vietnam was pulled into a wartime economy, with France and Japan competing in administration, often with Japan gaining the advantages. Japanese troops forced farmers to grow jute, instead of rice, thus depriving them of needed food, but France had already started the same policy to a smaller degree. The land set aside for growing staple crops such as maize and potatoes was decreased to make land for growing cotton, jute and other industrial plants. Because of the decreased land available for growing, harvests of staple crops decreased considerably. Crops were also exported to Japan.

The militaries of both France and Japan forcibly seized food from farmers to feed their troops. By 1941, there were 140,000 Japanese troops in French Indochina in addition to the Vichy French forces. During the occupation, the Allies made frequent air strikes against roads, warehouse and transportation facilities, which made the transport of rice from the south to the north extremely difficult. In the meantime, the Vichy civilian administration was highly corrupt, dysfunctional and unable to distribute remaining food stocks to areas where needed.

In March 1945, the Japanese ousted the Vichy administration and replaced it with the Japanese-backed government of the Empire of Vietnam, headed by Trần Trọng Kim. While this new government increased efforts to alleviate the famine, the inadequate food supply and the hoarding of food by the Imperial Japanese Army made their efforts futile.

Natural disasters

In northern Vietnam, drought and pests caused the winter-to-spring harvest of 1944 to decrease by 20%. Then, a flood during the harvest season caused the crisis to occur, which led to famine in 1945.

Consequences

By early 1945, many were forced to walk from town to town in search of food. The exact number of deaths caused by the 1944–1945 famine is unknown and is a matter of controversy. Various sources estimate between 400,000 and 2 million people starved in northern Vietnam during this time. In May 1945, the envoy at Hanoi asked the northern provinces to report their casualties. Twenty provinces reported that a total of 380,000 people starved to death and 20,000 more died because of disease. In October, a report from a French military official estimated half-a-million deaths. Governor General Jean Decoux wrote in his memoirs A la barre de l'Indochine that about a million northerners had starved to death.

The Viet Minh successfully directed public resentment and encouraged the peasants to seize the rice granaries of the occupation powers. In response, the Japanese imposed harsh punishment upon the transgressors and sometimes even mutilated them physically, which further inflamed popular anger. In the process, the Viet Minh transformed itself from a guerilla organization into a mass movement. Ho Chi Minh, in his Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945, would refer to the famine and quote a figure of 2 million deaths. Modern Vietnamese historians estimate between 1 and 2 million deaths.

According to the Việt Minh, 1 to 2 million Vietnamese starved to death in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam because of the Japanese since they seized Vietnamese rice and failed to pay. In Phat Diem, the Vietnamese farmer Di Ho was one of the few survivors who saw the Japanese steal grain. The North Vietnamese government accused both France and Japan of the famine and said that 1–2 million Vietnamese had died. Võ An Ninh took photographs of dead and dying Vietnamese during the great famine. Starving Vietnamese died throughout northern Vietnam in 1945 from the Japanese seizure of their crops when the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese, and Vietnamese corpses were all throughout the streets of Hanoi and had to be cleaned up by students.

References

Charles Hirschman; Samuel Preston; Vu Manh Loi (December 1995). "Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate" (PDF). Population and Development Review. 21 (4): 783–812. doi:10.2307/2137774. JSTOR 2137774. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 June 2010.
^ Gunn, Geoffrey (24 January 2011). "The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944-45 Revisited". The Asia-Pacific Journal. 9 (5). No. 4. Article ID 3483. http://www.japanfocus.org/-Geoffrey-Gunn/3483 http://japanfocus.org/data/japanese_indochina.png http://japanfocus.org/data/indochina_map.png http://japanfocus.org/data/faminevictims_1.jpeg http://japanfocus.org/data/famvic.2.jpeg http://japanfocus.org/data/agricultural_hydrolics_indochina.png http://japanfocus.org/-Geoffrey-Gunn/3483
• Gunn, Geoffrey (15 April 2019). "The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944–45 Revisited". Mass Violence & Résistance, (published 12 May 2011).
Huff, Gregg (March 2020). "The Great Second World War Vietnam and Java Famines". Modern Asian Studies. 54 (2): 618–653. doi:10.1017/S0026749X18000148.
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/great-vietnamese-famine-1944-45-revisited.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Pham%20Cao%20Duong,and%20loss%20of%20rice%20plants.
"Horrific photos recall Vietnamese Famine of 1945". Thanh Nien News. 15 January 2015. Archived from the original on 4 February 2015.
Wise, Edward Taylor (1991). "Vietnam in turmoil : the Japanese coup, the OSS, and the August revolution in 1945". UR Scholarship Repository: 46.
Reid, Anthony (2015). A history of Southeast Asia : critical crossroads. John Wiley & Sons. p. 323. ISBN 978-1118513002. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
^ Spector, Ronald H. (2007). In the ruins of empire : the Japanese surrender and the battle for postwar Asia (1st ed.). New York. pp. 104–105. ISBN 9780375509155.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Gunn, Geoffrey (17 August 2015). "The great Vietnam famine".
Dũng, Bùi Minh (1995). "Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–45". Modern Asian Studies. 29 (3). Cambridge University Press: 573–618. doi:10.1017/S0026749X00014001. S2CID 145374444.
Hien, Nina (Spring 2013). "The Good, the Bad, and the Not Beautiful: In the Street and on the Ground in Vietnam". Local Culture/Global Photography. 3 (2).
Vietnam: Corpses in a mass grave following the 1944–45 famine during the Japanese occupation. Up to 2 million Vietnamese died of starvation. AKG3807269.
"Vietnamese Famine of 1945". Japanese Occupation of Vietnam.
Bui, Diem; Chanoff, David (1999). In the Jaws of History. Vietnam war era classics series (illustrated, reprint ed.). Indiana University Press. p. 39, 40. ISBN 0253335396.

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Timeline

Prelude	Africa Second Italo-Ethiopian War Asia Second Sino-Japanese War Battles of Khalkhin Gol Europe Anschluss Munich Agreement Occupation of Czechoslovakia Operation Himmler Italian invasion of Albania
1939	Invasion of Poland Battle of the Atlantic Phoney War First Battle of Changsha Battle of South Guangxi Winter War 1939–1940 Winter Offensive
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1941	Battle of South Henan Battle of Shanggao Invasion of Yugoslavia German invasion of Greece Battle of Crete Anglo-Iraqi War Battle of South Shanxi Syria–Lebanon campaign East African campaign Invasion of the Soviet Union Summer War Finland (Silver Fox) Lithuania Battle of Kiev Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran Second Battle of Changsha Siege of Leningrad Battle of Moscow Bombing of Gorky Siege of Sevastopol Attack on Pearl Harbor Japanese invasion of Thailand Fall of Hong Kong Fall of the Philippines Battle of Guam Battle of Wake Island Malayan campaign Battle of Borneo Japanese invasion of Burma Third Battle of Changsha Greek famine of 1941–1944
1942	Fall of Singapore Battle of the Java Sea St Nazaire Raid Battle of Christmas Island Battle of the Coral Sea Battle of Madagascar Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign Battle of Gazala Battle of Dutch Harbor Battle of Midway Aleutian Islands campaign Kiska Attu Blue First Battle of El Alamein Battle of Stalingrad Kokoda Track campaign Rzhev Jubilee Second Battle of El Alamein Guadalcanal campaign Torch Chinese famine of 1942–1943
1943	Black May Tunisian campaign Battle of West Hubei Battle of Attu Bombing of Gorky Battle of Kursk Allied invasion of Sicily Smolensk Solomon Islands campaign Cottage Battle of the Dnieper Allied invasion of Italy Armistice of Cassibile Burma Northern Burma and Western Yunnan Changde Second Battle of Kiev Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign Tarawa Makin Bengal famine of 1943
1944	Tempest Monte Cassino / Anzio Korsun–Cherkassy Narva Ichi-Go Overlord Neptune Mariana and Palau Bagration Western Ukraine Second Battle of Guam Tannenberg Line Warsaw Uprising Eastern Romania Liberation of Paris Dragoon Gothic Line Belgrade offensive Lapland Market Garden Estonia Crossbow Pointblank Vietnamese famine of 1944–1945 Philippines (1944–1945) Leyte Syrmian Front Hungary Budapest Burma (1944–1945) Ardennes Bodenplatte Dutch famine of 1944–1945
1945	Vistula–Oder Battle of Manila Battle of Iwo Jima Indochina Vienna offensive Project Hula Western invasion of Germany Bratislava–Brno offensive Battle of Okinawa Second Guangxi campaign West Hunan Italy (Spring 1945) Battle of Berlin Prague offensive Surrender of Germany document Borneo Taipei Naval bombardment of Japan Manchuria Atomic bombings Debate South Sakhalin Kuril Islands Shumshu Surrender of Japan Potsdam Declaration document End of World War II in Asia

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