Abstract
This article deals with the “Romusha” described in history textbooks used in junior and senior high schools in Indonesia from 1984 to 1993 and analyses the meanings and images evoked by these descriptions.
The results of an analysis of the “Romusha” in 9 junior high school history textbooks and 5 senior high textbooks can be summarized as follows; “Romusha” is the most symbolic word used to represent the Japanese Military Occupation of Indonesia (1942-1945). In Japanese, romusha means ‘physical laborers’, but in 7 of 14 textbooks the word means ‘forced laborers’, in 4 it means ‘laborers’, in 3 ‘soldiers of labor’, in 2 ‘heroes of labor’ and ‘soldiers of economics’, and in 1 each ‘forced labors’, ‘corps of forced laborers’ and ‘forced coolies’. Thus the word can be said to have more specialized meanings in Indonesian textbooks than in the original Japanese.
In 12 of the 14 textbooks there are descriptions of mobilizing the “Romusha,” their actual working conditions in 9, the methods of dispatching workers to job sites and their final disposition in 10, and the number of workers in 8.
It is evident that the image of the “Romusha” in Indonesian history textbooks used in junior and senior high schools is basically that of “pathetic forced laborers” from many points of view.
