with equal pay to that of French officials. The Indochinese Federal Council, which was composed only of Indochinese, and later the Grand Federal Council were the formal structures that Decoux felt he needed to build to develop the Indochinese federal consciousness simultaneously with the elevation of the elite. Rather than a legislative or executive body, the Federal Council in both its forms was a body consisting of non-elected indigenous elites. They gave their opinions to the Governor General to assist him in his decision-making and served as a forum to strengthen relations between these elites and the authorities. The GFC replaced the IFC in 1943 by introducing 23 French representatives (from the economy's principal sectors, making it, according to Decoux, more representative) and adding five local members, thereby ensuring that the Indochinese presence outnumbered the European. Decoux believed that would reverse the reluctance of the local population to accept the politics of collaboration. In addition, he apparently wished to show goodwill toward the Indochinese peoples after Roosevelt's public statement that maintaining French sovereignty in Indochina was not a principal objective of the United States. The French colonial authorities learnt of the policy through BBC broadcasts. Decoux's first wife, Suzanne Humbert, died in a traffic accident in 1944. She is buried in the Domaine de Marie Church convent in Da Lat. Decoux enforced the discriminatory Vichy laws against Gaullists and Freemasons, as well as the Vichy anti-Jewish legislation, but he decried the impact on the French colonial regime and society. One writer claims that Decoux remained unconcerned by the famine of 1945. Over one million Vietnamese died of starvation in the countryside and urban cities and the author asserts that the Decoux government did nothing to help the Vietnamese peasants, farmers, and poor, despite soliciting and courting the Vietnamese elite. However, archival records show that Allied bombardment of railways and the requisitioning of boats by the Japanese made it impossible to transport rice from Cochinchina to Tonkin. On 9 March 1945, the Japanese took direct control of the government and ousted Decoux, establishing the Empire of Vietnam. Arrested, Decoux was tried by Justice High Court and placed under house arrest. There, he was tortured for two days by former French Communist partisans and left for dead. Cared for in the Val de Grâce Military Hospital in Paris, he was declared innocent of all charges in 1949 and restored to his former