During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, Riau became one of the main targets to be occupied. The Japanese army occupied Rengat on 31 March 1942. All of Riau was quickly subject to Japanese rule. One of the relics of the Japanese occupation is the 220 km railway line that connects Muaro Sijunjung in West Sumatra and Pekanbaru, also known as the Pekanbaru Death Railway which is now abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of Riau people were forced to work by the Japanese army to complete this project. Japan led the construction of 220 km of railroad from Pekanbaru to the Malacca Strait using forced labor and prisoners of war. This development was carried out for 15 months through mountains, swamps and fast-flowing rivers. As many as 6,500 Dutch prisoners of war (mostly Indo-Europeans) and British plus more than 100,000 romusha Indonesians (mostly Javanese) were mobilized by the Japanese military. When the project was completed in August 1945, almost one third of European prisoners of war and more than half of Indonesian porters died. The railroad is intended as a medium for transporting coal and soldiers from Pekanbaru to Muaro Sijunjung on the west of Sumatra. Construction of the railroad was completed on 15 August 1945, when the Japanese surrendered. This railroad was only used once to bring prisoners of war out of the area, and then abandoned.