section_path: History/Trade and colonization/Japanese
section_name: Japanese
paragraph_text: Japanese
  
  During World War II, Imperial Japan invaded most of the former western colonies under the concept of " Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ". However, the Shōwa occupation regime committed violent actions against civilians such as live human experimentation, sexual slavery under the brutal " comfort women " system, the Manila massacre and the implementation of a system of forced labour, such as the one involving four to ten million romusha in Indonesia. A later UN report stated that four million people died in Indonesia as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation. The Allied powers who then defeated Japan (and other allies of Axis) in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II then contended with nationalists to whom the occupation authorities had granted independence.