Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Madame Duong Van Khang, 1981

Interviewer: In 1945 , what kind of things did you see? What it was like with all those people dead on the road? Mme. Duong Van Khang: Now, I’ll just have to tell you what I remember as I go along. I was already here in 1944 . In 1945 the French imposed particularly high taxes and heavy corvée labor on us. On top of that we were forced to plant hemp for the Japanese . Lots of people died then, lots of suffering. Mme. Duong Van Khang: Things are so much better now, thanks to the fact that we have taken back power and are having economic plans. At that time so many people died, corpses were strewn all over the road. We did not have enough wood to make coffins for them. So we wrapped the corpses up in mats or in bamboo mattings to bury them. Those people who died, some dropped dead under the trees, others on the road and still others in their own homes. Mme. Duong Van Khang: I just saw so many dead people myself. It was so miserable then. We had to eat gruel mixed with all kinds of greens. Even so, many people did not even have this to eat. So many miserable people came to our house then, and we had to share our food with them. These were relatives, neighbors or co-villagers. We just could not keep our food to ourselves. Mme. Duong Van Khang: We had bran in the house then, the kind of bran you feed pigs with, and everybody was so hungry that we had to eat it and shared it. So many people died. We just did not have enough wood to make coffins for them. We had to wrap the corpses up in mats and bamboo mattings to bury them. Mme. Duong Van Khang: As for the Japanese , they forced us to plant hemp. It was really miserable for us to have to plant hemp for them. We had to use all our ricelands to grow hemp for the Japanese . As a result, we could not produce any rice at all. We had to use all our ricelands to grow hemp. But after we harvested the hemp and carried it to the Japanese , they did not give us any rice in return for all our hardship. Mme. Duong Van Khang: So the inhabitants here were extremely miserable. They suffered so much in 1945 . Small children like these here, so many of them died. They had to go around begging. But few people had any food, and so the children died. Sometimes, when a certain household still had some food, the children would be given a bowl of gruel. But most of the time they got nothing and so they starved. I saw all these myself.