The term “forced labor” refers to millions of Asian civilians and Allied prisoners of war, who were conscripted, deceived, or coerced into unpaid or underpaid labor for the Japanese government and private companies during the Asia Pacific War. They worked in mines, factories, construction sites, and military projects across East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, often under harsh conditions from which many laborers died.
The legal basis for most of labor mobilization was Japan’s 1938 National Mobilization Law, which were used to direct Korean and Chinese workers into war-related industries by 1939. Recruitment began through nominally voluntary channels, but progressively became more coercive, shifting from labor recruitment to government-mediated conscription. By 1944, local police and military authorities that directed and enforce these labor conscription at village collection points in colonial Korea. The total number of Korean mobilization differ between historians. During the 1965 normalization talks with Japan, the South Korean government indicated that 1.03 million Koreans had been forced to work. While a commonly cited number for Koreans that were brought into Japanese-controlled territory during the Asia Pacific War is roughly 700,000 to 800,000.
Chinese laborers were brought to Japan under more coercive conditions, frequently seized during military operations China. A 1946 report by Japan’s Foreign Ministry Report stated that 38,935 Chinese men and boys between the age of 11 and 78 were transported to Japan between 1943 and 1945 alone, working in mines, docks, and construction site. The overall recorded death rate among them was around 17.5 percent while some worksites recorded above 50 percent death rates. The best-documented atrocity is the 1945 Hanaoka Incident, where Chinese laborers at a copper mine in Akita Prefecture staged an uprising after prolonged starvation and abuse, which 418 out of 986 Chinese workers ultimately died.
Southeast Asia experienced the largest and least-documented forced labor programs, involving both local civilians and Allied prisoners of war. The U.S. Library of Congress states that between four and ten million civilians (romusha) were mobilized for military construction projects on Java. Historians estimates the resulting Indonesian death toll from forced labor to range from roughly 200,000 to over half a million. A broader occupation-era death toll are estimated at several million, driven substantially in conjunction with the 1944~45 famine.
Allied prisoners of war were also forced to work at various sites across Japan-occupied areas in Asia Pacific and in Japan. They were transported to Japanese occupied territory by unmarked Japanese ships, resulting in thousands of additional death during Allied ship raids later in the war. The best documented project of romusha and Allied POW labor is the Thailand-Burma “Death Railway”. It was built between October 1942 and October 1943 to supply Japanese forces in Burma. The Australia’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Australian War Memorial roughly estimates 60,000 Allied POW and approximately 200,000 Asian laborers to build the 415 km railway by hand. More than 12,000 Allied POW died with estimated death of romusha reaching 75,000 to 100,000.