page_title: Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies
section_title: The occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies / The occupation
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Repronegatief. Interneringskamp in Batavia tijdens de Japanse bezetting Français&#160;: Internement à Batavia pendant l'occupation japonaise English: Internment in Batavia during the Japanese occupation
context_page_description: The Japanese Empire occupied the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, during World War II from March 1942 until after the end of the war in September 1945. The period was one of the most critical in Indonesian history.
  The Dutch East Indies had been a colony of the Netherlands since 1819. However, the Netherlands itself had been occupied by Germany in 1940, and thus had little ability to defend its colony against the Imperial Japanese Army, and less than three months after the first attacks on Borneo, the Japanese navy and army overran Dutch and allied forces. 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 taken away from Indonesia as forced labourers for Japanese military projects, including the Burma-Siam railway. Four million people died in Indonesia as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation, including 30,000 European civilian internee deaths.
  In 1944–1945, Allied troops largely bypassed Indonesia and did not fight their way into the most populous parts such as Java and Sumatra.
context_section_description: The colonial army was consigned to detention camps and Indonesian soldiers were released.  Expecting that Dutch administrators would be kept by the Japanese to run the colony, most Dutch had refused to leave. Instead, they were sent to concentration camps and Japanese or Indonesian replacements were installed in senior and technical positions. Japanese troops took control of government infrastructure and services such as ports and postal services. In addition to the 100,000 European (and some Chinese) civilians interned, 80,000 Dutch, British, Australian, and US Allied troops went to prisoner-of-war camps where the death rates were between 13 and 30 percent.
  The Indonesian ruling class (composed of local officials and politicians who had formerly worked for the Dutch colonial government) co-operated with the Japanese military authorities, who in turn helped to keep the local political elites in power and employ them to supply newly arrived Japanese industrial concerns and businesses and the armed forces (chiefly auxiliary military and police units run by the Japanese military in the Dutch East Indies). Indonesian co-operation allowed the Japanese military government to focus on securing the large archipelago's waterways and skies and using its islands as defence posts against any Allied attacks (which were assumed to most likely come from Australia). The Japanese colonial rulers divided Indonesia into three separate regions; Sumatra was placed under the 25th Army, Java and Madura were under the 16th Army, while Borneo and eastern Indonesia were controlled by the 2nd South Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy (the IJN). The 16th Army and the 25th Army were headquartered in Singapore and also controlled Malaya until April 1943, when its command was narrowed to just Sumatra and the headquarters moved to Bukittinggi. The 16th Army was headquartered in Jakarta, while the IJN's 2nd South Fleet was headquartered in Makassar.
  Experience of the occupation varied considerably, depending upon where one lived and one's social position. Many who lived in areas considered important to the war effort experienced torture, sex slavery, arbitrary arrest and execution, and other war crimes. Many thousands of people were taken away from Indonesia as forced labourers (romusha) for Japanese military projects, including the Burma-Siam and Saketi-Bayah railways, and suffered or died as a result of ill-treatment and starvation. Between four and 10 million romusha in Java were forced to work by the Japanese military.
  Tens of thousands of Indonesians were to starve, work as slave labourers, or be forced from their homes. In the National Revolution that followed, tens, even hundreds, of thousands, would die in fighting against the Japanese, Allied forces, and other Indonesians, before Independence was achieved. A later United Nations report stated that four million people died in Indonesia as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation, including 30,000 European civilian internee deaths.  A Dutch government study described how the Japanese military recruited women as prostitutes by force in Indonesia. It concluded that among the 200 to 300 European women working in the Japanese military brothels, "some sixty five were most certainly forced into prostitution." 
  Other young women (and their families), faced with various pressures in the internment camps or in wartime society, agreed to offers of work, the nature of which was frequently not explicitly stated.
  Materially, whole railway lines, railway rolling stock, and industrial plants in Java were appropriated and shipped back to Japan and Manchuria. British intelligence reports during the occupation noted significant removals of any materials that could be used in the war effort.
caption: Internment camp in Jakarta, c. 1945
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