Duong Van Khang interview

In general, life of the people was full of hardship. This was because taxes were high and corvee labor was harsh. So the majority of the population had to suffer starvation frequently. In 1945, in our village alone 250 persons died of starvation. These people just dropped dead everywhere. As far as my family was concerned, during that famine we still had enough rice. But we had to help those less fortunate than us. We cooked our rice into thin gruel and we and the poor neighbors ate together. We had to eat gruel mixed with a lot of greens, though. It's just like the kind people feed pigs with now. To tell you the truth, we were also hungry.

Q: When the Japanese troops came, did the situation change? How was it different? What did the Japanese do that the French did not do?

A: The Japanese came here in droves. When they came, they made the village officials force us to grow hemp for them. And then they collected the hemp.
Under the French, the majority of the population suffered terrible hardship. Only a very small minority enjoyed a comfortable life. Most of the people suffered a lot because of the high taxes and the heavy corvee labor. Furthermore, they abused us physically. The majority of the inhabitants here hired themselves out as laborers. And although they worked from dawn till dusk they did not have enough to eat. Only a few rich families enjoyed their life. How come we suffered so terribly in 1945? This was because of the arrival of the Japanese.
The French were already exploiting us. And now on top of the French the Japanese were exploiting us. Worse still, they forced us to use our paddy fields to plant hemp for them. We had to take care of these hemp fields and had to harvest the hemp for the Japanese, but we were never paid for our work. For that reason, we suffered a famine. In 1945, so many people died of hunger here in this village. I myself had to bury four persons. So many people died at the time so we did not have enough wood to make coffins for them. I had to wrap the four corpses I buried with hemp…