In the autumn of 1944, the sun still shone golden, and the rice still ripened, but the people of the North had begun to starve.
Japan staged a coup against the French on March 9, 1945. They forced the people to pull up rice and plant jute and castor oil plants to weave sacks and make ropes for the war effort.
The lush green fields suddenly turned into barren, thorny patches. The remaining rice was confiscated by them, shipped back to Japan or stored full for their soldiers.
Rice from the South could no longer be transported North. American planes bombed and severed all railways, bridges, and roads. The August 1945 flood was unprecedentedly severe; the red, murky waters swept away the final harvest. In the tenth lunar month, people began to die.
Thái Bình, Nam Định, Ninh Bình, Hà Nội, Bắc Giang… Bodies lay strewn along the roads, markets, and train stations. Some days in Hà Nội, garbage trucks had to be used to transport corpses, dozens of people per trip.
The living were reduced to skin and bones, with vacant eyes, crawling to find a rotten banana root, a handful of duckweed, or a pinch of bran mixed with husk.
Some families sold or exchanged children to save one life. Some mothers embraced their children and starved to death together. In some places, people were forced to resort to cannibalism.
This was called the 1945 Famine (Nạn đói Ất Dậu). In just a few short months, nearly two million people died. Two million lives. Nearly a quarter of the population of the North at the time.
But it was precisely in that desperate hunger that a fire ignited. When people had nothing left to lose but their shackles, they were willing to trade their lives for a bowl of rice. And the Việt Minh gave them that bowl of rice though it was a communal bowl, a bowl of hope.
On August 19, 1945, Hà Nội seized power with barely a shot fired. The people who had been starving on the streets yesterday were today holding the red flag with the golden star, marching through the streets. They no longer feared the Japanese, no longer feared the French, no longer feared death. They only feared being hungry for one more day.
On September 2, 1945, at Ba Đình Square, Uncle Hồ stood amidst millions of emaciated, tattered people, reading the Declaration of Independence in his warm Nghệ An accent:
"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…"
As soon as the sentence ended, the entire square erupted in tears. They wept because for the first time in their lives, they heard that they had the right to live, the right to eat their fill.
From the horrifying hunger of the Ất Dậu Famine, a nation rose up. They were gaunt, ragged, and lacked modern weapons, but they possessed something no empire could extinguish: hunger turned into rage, and rage turned into an unstoppable force.
1945 was not just the year independence was won.
It was the year the entire nation stepped out of a two million person grave. Blood and hunger watered this land, allowing the tree of freedom to grow, blazing red like the flag, and burning brightly until today.