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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
The deaths stemming from the great famine of 1944-45, which reached its zenith in March-April 1945 in Japanese-occupied northern Vietnam, eclipsed in scale all human tragedies of the modern period in that country up until that time. The demographics vary from French estimates of 600,000-700,000 dead, to official Vietnamese numbers of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 victims. Food security is an age-old problem, and dearth, famine, and disease have long been a scourge of mankind across the broad Eurasian landmass and beyond. While more recent understandings recognize that famines are mostly man-made, it is also true that in ecologically vulnerable zones, alongside natural disasters, war and conflict often tilts the balance between sustainability and human disaster. Allowing the contingency of natural cause as a predisposing factor for mass famine, this article revisits the Vietnam famine of 1944-45 in light of flaws in human agency (alongside willful or even deliberate neglect) as well as destabilization stemming from war and conflict. While I avoid the issue of impacts of the famine in favor of seeking cause - the human suffering of the famine has not been effaced by time. It was recorded in Hanoi newspapers at the time. It survives in local memory and in fiction by Vietnamese writers.
1 From a range of official and other sources, David Marr concludes that the death toll probably reached one million or ten percent of the population of the affected area perishing in a five-month period. See David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997, p. 104. Ngo Vinh Long asserts that two million people died in Tonkin alone during the few months from the end of 1944 to the early part of 1945. See Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants under the French, Columbia University Press, 1991, p.129. Bui Ming Dung, who sampled a range of sources, also estimates between one and two million victims. Bui Ming Dung, “Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 29, no.3, July, 1995, pp.575-76.
2 Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981. In this seminal text on food security, Sen broadly demonstrates that famine occurs not only or primarily from an insufficiency of food but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. See also, Sugata Bose, “Starvation amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal, Honan, and Tonkin, 1942-44” (Modern Asian Studies, 24, no.4, 1990: 699-727), “a study which puts into bold relief, the role played by the state, fluctuations in wider economic systems, and various social structures in the translation of chronic hunger into dramatic famine and the uneven social distribution of its costs. It also highlights the role of famine in undermining the legitimacy of the state and the pre-existing social structures.” (pp. 726-27).
3 My intuitive understanding of this linkage also stems from working with statisticians seeking to calibrate the number of conflict-linked deaths in East Timor versus mortality stemming from famine linked with forced relocation and political manipulation of relief aid.
4 Personal accounts of the famine have been collected as in Van Tao and Furuta Mota (eds), Nan doi Nam 1945 o Viet Nam: Nhung Chung tich lich su (Hanoi, 1995). Ngo Ving Long, Before the Revolution; Pham Cao Duong, Vietnamese Peasants under French Domination, 1861-1945, Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph 25, University of California, Berkeley, Ca, 1985; and David Marr, Vietnam 1945, p.104, have offered partial translations or word pictures of the scope of the famine. According to Marr, the worst affected provinces were Nam Dinh, Thai Binh, Ninh Binh, Hai Duong, and Khien An, with particular districts even more affected. Neither was Hanoi spared the famine, though obviously certain classes were differentially affected. Notwithstanding these accounts and studies, it appears to me that the actual impact of the famine and its geographical impact is the least well-researched aspect.
5 Undoubtedly the first detailed accounting in English language of these events owes to John R. Andrus and Katrine R.C. Greene, “Recent Developments in Indo-China: 1939-43,” in Charles Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina (Oxford University Press, London, 1944), pp.351-89.
6 See Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution, p.32.
7 Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (AOM) Indo/NF/Situation de l'Indochine française durée 1902-1907, Rapport par Beau, Gouverneur General.
8 On irrigation, dike construction, and agricultural improvements in Tonkin and Annam, see Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina, (pp.222-25), the classic colonial-era account in English of French agriculture practices in Indochina.
9 See, for example, James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1976; Ngo Vinh Long, “The Indochinese Communist Party and Peasant Rebellion in Central Vietnam, 1930-1931,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol.10, no. 4, (1978), pp. 15-35.
10 See Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina, p. 238, who also noted the need for or the wisdom of stressing agricultural diversification away from crops other than rice.
11 AOM Indo/NF/104/1004 Gouverneur de la Cochinchine Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine, Saigon, no.734, 25 Dec. 1934; Bulletin Economique de l'Indochine, Dec. 1938. For a statistical analysis of the dramatic shift in trade from traditional markets (France, etc.) to Japan, see Andrus and Greene, “Recent Developments in Indo-China: 1939-43,” in Robequain, pp.363-64. As they note, much of the rice shipped to Hong Kong and other Chinese ports was probably shipped to Japan or used to feed Japanese troops in China.
12 AOM Indo/NF/48/578-583, Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine M. le Ministre des Colonies, Paris.
13 AOM Indo/NF/104/1004 Indochine et Pacifique, p.7, 17 Mai 1939.
14 AOM Résident Supérieur, Tonkin Gouverneur Général de l'Indochine, Hanoi, 10 Avril 1937.
15 Bulletin Economique de l'Indochine, Decembre 1938.
16 AOM Indo NF/330/2664, “Rapport Gouverneur Veber,” Vichy, 23 Avril 1941. According to Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina, (p.329), rice exports to Japan were never important and shrinking. Averaging 109,000 tons annually in 1913-1928, they dropped to 36 tons in 1929-32 and barely 2 tons in 1933-37.
17 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2010, p.439 note 33.
18 See, Memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State (Welles) Regarding A Conversation With the Japanese Ambassador (Nomura), 23 July 1941, who stated that Japan was now importing a million tons of rice a year from Indochina. As Wells replied, “any agreement which Japan might have reached with the Vichy Government could only have been reached as a result of pressure brought to bear upon the Vichy Government by Berlin.” U.S., Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941 (Washington, D.C.: U.S., Government Printing Office, 1943), 1983, pp. 692-96.
19 AOM Indo NF/330/2664, “Rapport Gouverneur Veber,” Vichy, 23 Avril 1941. Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina, (p. 238), also contended that the biggest defect of Indochinese rice (compared to Burma) entering the market was its heterogeneous character; different color, size, and hardness all mixed up from various fields with no indication of origin. There were then more than 2,000 varieties of rice cultivated in Indochina, well adapted to local conditions but, “too many” and selection was required.
20 Pham Cao Duong, Vietnamese Peasants under French Domination, 1861-1945, Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph 25, University of California, Berkeley, Ca, 1985, pp. 181-82.
21 Nguyen Khac Vien, The Long Resistance (1858-1975), Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, 1975, pp.92-95.
22 Marr, Vietnam 1945, p.99.
23 Pham Cao Duong, Vietnamese Peasants under French Domination, 1861-1945, pp.181-82.
24 Ngo Vinh Long, Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants under the French, Columbia University Press, 1991, pp.129-31.
25 Brocheux and Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, pp: 262-65. Geertz's classic study of the problem is Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (University of California Press, 1970). Writing in 1944, Andrus and Greene, “Recent Developments in Indo-China: 1939-43,” in Robequain, p. 385, noted that there had been numerous reports of food shortages in Tonkin. Citing the research of French agronomist Pierre Gourou, population pressure was of the order of 3,500 persons per square mile. They also noted that the Japanese appeared to have been shipping northerners south but that such internal migration was unlikely to keep ahead of the birthrate.
26 Marr, Vietnam 1945, pp.99-100.
27 “Controle Japonais sur l'Administration Français en Indochine,” Bulletin de Renseignement, No.323/BO, DGER, 14 Sept. 1944. For details of the January 1941 rice agreement between the Vichy authorities with Japan, see Andrus and Greene, “Recent Developments in Indo-China: 1939-43,” in Robequain, pp.367-78. According to these authors, “In addition to the rice guaranteed to Japan, that country was to receive any unused portion of the 200,000 ton quota allotted to France and other colonies, plus any export surplus of white rice beyond a total of 1,020,000 tons.” (p.369).
28 Brocheux and Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, p.90. Specifically, when a 1945 agreement on rice delivery to Japan was signed in March, the Japanese had more than 100,000 tons in stock that they had been unable to transport (p.346). In September 1945, when arriving British forces inventoried the rice supply in Cholon, they estimated that 69,000 tons remained in Mitsui Company warehouses, 66,000 in stores of the Vichy-created Comité des céreales (grain), and with Japanese stocks in Cochinchina. Cambodia, and northern Annam amounting to 25,000 tons (p.348).
29 See Martin L. Mickelsen, “A mission of vengeance: Vichy French in Indochina in World War II,” Air Power History. FindArticles.com. 17 Dec. 2010.
30 National Archives of Australia (NAA) A 3269 G5/4 [South China Sea, South China, French Indochina and North] SHARK. In this operation, Vice Adm John S. McCain operating in the South China Sea hit Japanese shipping, airfields, and other shore installations in southeastern French Indochina. For this and other detailed logs of Japanese shipping losses inflicted by US sea and, with less detail, air power, see Robert J. Cressman, The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II
31 See Geoffrey C. Gunn, Encountering Macau: A Portuguese City State on the Periphery of China, 1557-1999, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1996, p.126.
32 NAA A 3269 G5/4 [South China Sea, South China, French Indochina and North] SHARK.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid. On the Japanese wooden ships, also see Andrus and Greene, “Recent Developments in Indo-China: 1939-43,” in Robequain, The Economic Development of French Indochina. p. 385.
35 This was not a disinterested report, but offered four optimum target sites for submarine-based landing parties where the line was at its closest point to the sea, from Thanh Hoa in the north to Quang Nan-Danang in the south. NAA A3269 E3/4 Lower South China Sea, Singapore OPTICIAN copy [South China Sea].
36 NAA A 3269 G5/4 [South China Sea, South China, French Indochina and North] SHARK.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. On 1 July a bridge and railway line at Phu Lang Thuong (now known as Bac Giang) was hit. Although a strategic line connecting with Lang Son, this was not in the delta region.
39 NAA A 3269 E7/A [Lower South China Sea, Singapore, POLITICIAN project copy [Tourane Bay, Indo-China] Dubbed the Politician project, a first attempt to blow up the track south of Danang was mounted on 5-6 April 1945 but foiled by an armed maintenance group. Part of a series of operations mounted out of Western Australia involving American submarines and Australian commandos, other missions included raids on railroads in Java, a successful and celebrated raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore, operations in Malaya, attempts to create bases in the Paracels and Natuna Islands, and even a planned raid on Japanese shipping in Nagasaki and Sasebo.
40 According to Mickelsen, “A mission of vengeance,” the commander in chief of the French army in Vietnam, General Eugene Mordant, was convinced that the Fourteenth Air Force had deliberately bombed Hanoi in December 1943, and again in April 1944 in retaliation for Decoux's policy of surrendering downed American fliers to the Japanese. Notably, on 10 and 12 December 1943, Hanoi (and not the usual target of the nearby Japanese airfield at Gia Lam) had been attacked for the first time, causing 1,232 casualties and 500 deaths. On 8 April 1944, Hanoi was hit again by the 308th Bomb Group (H) when the Yersin hospital complex was targeted, leaving 46 civilians dead with 141 wounded in Vietnamese and Chinese residential areas. Mordant's fears were reinforced by a warning from Fourteenth Air Force commander, Claire Chennault that all the major towns in Tonkin would be bombed if similar incidents occurred in the future.
41 Bui Ming Dung, “Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” pp.573-618.
42 Marr, Vietnam 1945, p.109.
43 See King C. Chen, Vietnam and China 1938-54, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1969, Append II, p.337.
44 AOM Indo NF 134/1219 Direction d'Information, “Les Japonais et leurs collaborateurs sont responsible de la famine,” nd.
45 Chen, Vietnam and China 1938-54, p.133.
46 Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of War: Vietnam, the United States and Modern Historical Experience, Pantheon Books, New York, 1985, p.36. Also see Stein Tönnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2010, p.201.
47 Nguyen Khac Vien, The Long Resistance (1858-1975), pp.92-95.
48 Archimedes Patti, Why Vietnam? Prelude to America's Albatross, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, p.133.
49 Brocheux and Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, p.34.
50 NAA A1838 3014/11/89 Part I, Vietnam Foreign Policy Relations with Japan, Australian Legation, Saigon, to External Affairs, Canberra, 11 Feb. 1957. As Australian diplomatic sources reveal, Diem felt nothing but contempt for the Japanese in general, and read back history accordingly. The last of the Southeast Asian countries to receive Japanese reparations under the terms of the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, in May 1969 the Republic of Vietnam accepted US$39 million over a period of five years, an outcome bitterly opposed by the DRV. Cambodia and Laos accepted “free technical aid” rather than formal reparations.
51 Bui Ming Dung, “Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” pp. 576-77. We recognize that some Japanese academic writing has acknowledged the DRV claims as to the number of victims and general attribution as to cause.
52 Bui Ming Dung, “Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45,” p. 618. Fortunately, more sober minds prevailed in consideration of US bombing of the northern delta. On 6 August 1945, Joseph C. Crew, Acting Secretary of State, communicated to the Secretary of State that military operations in Tonkin and the prospect of serial bombardment of the dikes in the Red River Delta - as evidently contemplated by military planners -would cause “formidable danger to the population of this area.” This was no understatement. At risk were the lives of eight million people in densely populated land crosscut by dikes built up over the centuries. The gravity of the situation had been conveyed initially by the French Military Mission in Kunming to the Commander of the US Fourteenth Air Force. See State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) 35 Crew to Secretary of State, 6 August 1945, SR. The question of bombing the dikes was raised again by Pentagon planners in the 1960s, just as nuclear options were being weighed in some quarters in Washington.
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