ABSTRACT
Between 1937 and 1945 imperial Japan utilized the skills, energy, and physical strength of millions of human beings to prosecute a war of conquest across East and Southeast Asia. Japan needed manpower to staff the military services, manufacture war matériel and consumer goods, construct military facilities, roads, and railways, and produce minerals and agricultural products. The population of Japan proper, around 100 million people, was systematically mobilized. Korea supplied soldiers, civilian workers for the military, and “comfort women” for brothels used by the troops. Millions of people in northern China worked for the Japanese in agriculture and construction, with some being sent to Manchukuo, Mongolia, and Tibet. There was also widespread recruitment of civilian labor in Taiwan and the occupied territories of Southeast Asia. Although most workers were nominally hired as paid contract laborers, many were recruited under duress, and there was some use of forced labor. The process caused a massive dislocation of people and resulted in a huge death toll.
