Vietnamese Famine of 1945

The Vietnamese Famine of 1945 (Vietnamese: Nạn đói Ất Dậu - Famine of the Yiyou Year) was a famine that occurred in northern Vietnam from October 1944 to May 1945, during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina in World War II. Between 400,000 and 2 million people are estimated to have starved to death during this time.

There were many causes of this famine. The direct cause 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. Military and economic changes caused the northern part of the country to plunge into famine.

Indirectly, the mismanagement of the French administration in Vietnam played a role. The French reformed the economy in order to serve the administration and to meet the needs of war, because they were being invaded themselves. Natural causes included natural disasters such as droughts and floods destroying northern crops.

After the Great Depression in the 1930s, France returned to its policy of economic protectorate and monopolized the exploitation of natural resources of Indochina. The people in 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 and a small minority of Vietnamese and Hoa and some people in the cities benefited. When the war started, France was weakened. In East Asia, Japan began to expand and viewed 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 and Japan increased pressure on France and entered Indochina that September. Vietnam was pulled into a wartime economy, with France and Japan competing in administration. Many people blame the famine on Japanese troops hoarding foodstuff from farmers, forcing them to grow jute instead of rice, thus depriving them of needed food, but in reality France had started the same policy earlier. They had decreased the land set aside for growing staple crops such as maize and potatoes 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.

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