Because of the inherent structure of the military, those POWs who perished were properly buried and accounted for. Not so, for the romusha! As often as not, they were not even buried. Most would likely have been cremated or simply left in the jungles where they had died. In addition, hundreds if not thousands, died of cholera. The Japanese were deathly afraid of cholera and had those bodies burned in huge pyres. Some say that they burned the nearly dead along with the dead! One additional indignity awaited the women who accompanied their ‘hired’ husbands. There are reports that many were sexually abused and some were forced into service in the “comfort stations” that the IJA established along the TBR route. In short, while the conditions for the Allied POWs were horrendous, they at least had the support of the military infrastructure and discipline to help sustain them. The romusha had none of this. While the IJA had a policy of keeping the various nationalities of POWs together, this did not seem to apply to the romusha. It was not uncommon for them to be sent to the many work camps in mixed ethnic groups whose languages and cultures were strange to each other. This lack of any infrastructure or support explains – at least partially — why the romusha suffered double the mortality of the POWs.
It is well documented that 70% of the 12,000 Allied POWs who died building the TBR succumbed to infectious diseases. Dysentery and Malaria were the main culprits but all manner of diseases befell them. One of the most dreaded was Cholera. But unlike the romusha, the POWs had the benefits of having been inoculated with the rather crude vaccine that was available at the time. While over 1300 POWs were documented as dying from Cholera, many more were infected but survived. This was not the case for the romusha. For them, contracting Cholera was almost a sure death sentence. Even if that had had a partial immunity from an earlier expose to this disease, they were weakened by other concurrent diseases and malnutrition such that many did not even survive for 24 hours from the onset of the symptoms. Entire camps were wiped out. POWs recount being sent into these highland camps where they were ordered burn the bodies.
In addition to the lack of anything resembling the military organization and discipline found among the POWs, the AFL were subjected to far harsher conditions than the POWs. Essentially, it was every man for himself. Even the simple procurement of the meager rations was a disorganized chore.
Even upon completion of the TBR in Oct 43, the situation for many of the romusha did not improve. While the POWs were being consolidated to camps near ThaMaKam, most of the AFL remained in the jungle on wood cutting duty. Soon after the last of the POWs reached ThaMaKam in May of 1944, the IJA established the first true hospital in the nearby city of Nakorn Pathom. Many POWs owe their survival to the treatments they received there. The AFL received no such respite. The best they could hope for was to die in one of the smaller IJA-run hospitals in the areas near their consolidation camps.
It must also be noted that the various Allied nations rapidly returned the POWs to their homes. Almost all were repatriated by early 1946. Little or nothing, however, was done for the AFL. Many of them languished in squalid camps in the Kanchanaburi are well into 1947. Dr. Boggett rightfully points out in his seminal works on the plight of the romusha that this was despite the fact that the vast majority were British subjects if not fully British citizens. London did almost nothing to assist them in returning to Malaya or Singapore.