On the afternoon of June 23, 2010, the Faculty of History, University of Social Sciences and Humanities organized a presentation of the new book Immigrés de force: Les travailleurs indochinois en France (1939 – 1952) [Forced Migration: Indochinese Workers in France (1939-1952)] by French scholar and journalist Pierre Daum.The book introduction attracted the attention of many cadres, students of the school, researchers, officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vietnam Television... On behalf of the school's Board of Directors, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Kim attended and delivered opening and closing remarks. The presentation by author Pierre Daum briefly introduced the history of about 20,000 Indochinese workers (almost all of them Vietnamese) in France from 1939 to 1952. World War II made France thirsty for human resources to serve in weapons factories and the solution of using colonial people was thoroughly used by France. Unlike the colonial African people, the Vietnamese did not participate much on the front but were mostly sent to military workshops - where they had to work hard and were treated badly, almost like slaves. “After a long journey at sea,” Pierre Daum recounted with a bitter tone, “the Indochinese workers landed in the port city of Marseille and were immediately thrown into prison, before being organized into teams to work in the arsenals.” The harsh working environment, combined with a lack of knowledge and experience, caused nearly 1,000 people to suffer work-related accidents and die.
The defeat of France (June 1940) made the fate of nearly 20,000 Indochinese workers even more tragic. French gunpowder factories closed and Indochinese workers were forced to return home. However, due to the severity of the World War and the interruption of the sea route to Indochina, the repatriation of about 15,000 Indochinese people could not be carried out. They were transferred to southern regions of France such as Marseille, Toulon, Bordeaux... There, they were separated into groups of 2,000 to 4,000 people, living in 7 camps, managed by French officers. Mr. Pierre Daum described: “Every day they had to work hard, in the afternoon they were allowed to walk around the camp, before 8 pm they had to gather, otherwise they would be beaten… They lived like in prison, were treated badly, starved because the commanding officers reduced their rations…” During their exile in southern France, the Vietnamese laborers left historical marks on the agricultural cultivation of the Camargue triangle in the south of Marseille. Due to the natural conditions relatively close to Indochina, the government here thought of using the above mentioned number of Vietnamese laborers to grow rice. The above experiment gave results beyond expectations and from then until now, Camargue has become a large rice granary of France. After the end of World War II, the De Gaulle government advocated repatriating the above mentioned laborers. However, before the plan could be implemented, the French returned to reoccupy Indochina. Ships from France to Indochina were only for transporting soldiers, not Vietnamese laborers. The Vietnamese migrants were trapped in France, where they continuously organized activities to show support for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam government of President Ho Chi Minh. The above political activities of the Vietnamese migrant community in France caused the people of Marseille to react and demand the government to expel them. It took France another 4 years to repatriate these migrants. By 1952, the repatriation was basically completed. Of the total 20,000 Indochinese people (the majority of whom were Vietnamese) who were forced to migrate to France since 1939, about 18,000 returned to their country; 1,000 died and 1,000 remained in France after 1952.
Few people would know about that stormy page in the history of the hundred-year relationship between Vietnam and France if scholar Pierre Daum had not painstakingly searched through the archives for pages of documents that had faded after more than half a century. After three years of following information from the documents and traveling to many areas in Paris, Marseille, Hanoi... scholar Daum found 25 living witnesses - those who participated in the migration of 20,000 Indochinese people at that time to collect more information about their lives and miserable working conditions during the period 1939-1954. The book caused a great stir in political, social, academic forums... in many countries. At the end of 2009 (6 months after the book was published by Actes Sud), the Mayor of Camargue held a ceremony to honor the Vietnamese who pioneered the rice-growing agriculture that is still popular in the south of France. After seven decades, history has finally been cleared up.
