Romusha
Rōmusha (労 務 者) is a Japanese word for "worker", but was given the meaning of "slave labor" especially during the time of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War II , when the Japanese military used between four and ten million Romusha on the island of Java Forced work. Many of them died under the harsh conditions or were stranded far from home. The term was not defined by either the Japanese or the Allies, and the numbers sometimes include the unpaid kinrōhōshi workers, the Japanese-backed Indonesian Volunteer Army Pembela Tanah Air (PETA) and the voluntary transmigrasi to other Indonesian islands .
Overview
The Rōmusha were paid recruited workers who were mobilized in Sumatra , eastern Indonesia, and Java. About ten percent of them were women. Their service hours included a day or the time it took to complete a specific project. The types of work varied widely: from light housework to heavy construction work. In general, the Romusha were mobilized within each administrative district. The place of work was within walking distance. But the Rōmusha could be sent to other districts for special projects . When their intended service term was up, they were sent home and replaced with new workers. However, some were sent away from Indonesia to other Japanese-occupied areas in Southeast Asia . This also affected about 270,000 Java workers, of whom only 52,000 returned to Java. Many had died or migrated after the war.
history
The practice of unpaid service work was already common in the Dutch East Indies in the colonial days. While paying the Romusha was an improvement, wages lagged behind inflation and were often forced to work in dangerous circumstances, with poor diet, housing and medical care. The Rōmusha were supplemented by actually unpaid workers, the kinrōhōshi , who mainly did menial work. The kinrōhōshi were hired for a shorter period than the Rōmusha , through the Tonarigumi neighborhood associations. They were volunteers in theory, but there was considerable social pressure to become "volunteers". This was a sign that they were loyal to the Japanese cause. In 1944 there were about 200,000 kinrōhōshi in Java .
The brutality of the Romusha and other systems of forced labor was a major reason for the high death rates between Indonesians during the Japanese occupation. A UN report later found that four million people died in Indonesia as a result of the Japanese occupation. Around 2.4 million people died of starvation on Java in 1944/45.
From 1944 onwards, the PETA used thousands of Rōmusha for work on military installations and for economic projects that were supposed to make Java more self-sufficient with a view to allied blockades.
The Japanese military made extensive use of such forced labor, while the Burma-Thailand Railway (1942/43) and the Pakan Baroe Railway in Sumatra (1943-45) were built. The death rate among the Romusha from atrocities, starvation rations and disease far exceeded the death rate among Allied prisoners of war.
Footnotes
- ^ Library of Congress, 1992, Indonesia: World War II and the Struggle For Independence, 1942-50; The Japanese Occupation, 1942-45. Last accessed February 9, 2007.
- ↑ Hovinga, Henk (2010). The Sumatra Railroad: Final Destination Pakan Baroe 1943–45. Leiden: KITLV Press. ISBN 9789067183284 .