More and more starving folks were flocking to different places. In the market, many people were selling children. In my village, some kidnapped children to sell in markets on the other side of the Red River. There were even people who specialized in trafficking children, as if they were buying and selling chickens and pigs. But now there was nothing to eat, so who would still buy children? They were being caught and then brought back. It was miserable. At that time, Hanoi was not yet hit by famine, but many hungry people came here, making streets and alleys of Hanoi full of misery and hardship: The more chaotic it got, the more panicked people became when they saw hordes of hungry people pouring in… People sat, and the dead lay scattered on the sidewalks. Day and night, carts pulled dead bodies aimlessly going by.
It is almost unbelievable that the horrific scenes of the 1945 famine, as depicted in this translated excerpt from “Old Story of Hanoi” by renowned writer Tô Hoài (1920-2014), occurred just a few decades ago in Vietnam’s bustling capital city.
The Great Famine of 1945, also known as Nạn đói Ất Dậu in Vietnamese, took place in Tonkin and Annam under French and Japanese occupation. According to government statistics, the famine caused 2 million deaths in northern Vietnam, while international documents estimate the death toll at around 1 million, or approximately 8 percent of the population. The tragedy formed a key part of modern Vietnam’s history. Cultivating more land and addressing food shortages were key elements of Viet Minh propaganda, and preventing another famine was central to the communist regime’s legitimacy.
