Rōmusha (労務者) (compare corvée), is a Japanese language word for a "paid conscripted laborer." In English, it usually refers to non-Japanese who were forced to work for the Japanese military during World War II. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million rōmushas were forced to work (often at low pay) by the Japanese military during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during World War II, many of whom experienced harsh conditions and either died or were stranded far from home. With the term imprecisely defined by both the Japanese and the Allies, estimates of the total number of rōmushas may include the kinrōhōshi (English: unpaid forced laborers), native auxiliary forces (such as troops of the Japanese-allied Indonesian volunteer army Pembela Tanah Air (PETA)), and voluntary transmigrants to other islands in Indonesia.
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Rōmusha in the context of Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies
The Empire of Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during World War II from March 1942 until after the end of the war in September 1945.
In May 1940, Germany occupied the Netherlands, and martial law was declared in the Dutch East Indies. Following the failure of negotiations between the Dutch authorities and the Japanese, Japanese assets in the archipelago were frozen. The Dutch declared war on Japan following the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies began on 10 January 1942, and the Imperial Japanese Army overran the entire colony in less than three months. The Dutch surrendered on 8 March. Initially, most Indonesians welcomed the Japanese as liberators from their Dutch colonial masters. The sentiment changed, however, as between 4 and 10 million Indonesians were recruited as forced labourers (rōmusha) on economic development and defence projects in Java. Between 200,000 and 500,000 were sent away from Java to the outer islands, and as far as Burma and Siam. Of those taken off Java, not more than 70,000 survived the war. Four million people died in the Dutch East Indies as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation, including 30,000 European civilian internee deaths.