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Baxter 1
Joseph C. Baxter 19th Bomb Group Nichols and Clark Fields Philippine Islands
HONSHU GROUP P.O.W. CAMP LABOR CAMP 5B, NIIGATA, JAPAN
LOCATION
Located about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, Camp No. 5B was one of the most remote and infamous camps in the Honshu group of P.O.W. camps. It was situated at 37 degrees 58 minutes N, 139 degrees 02 minutes E on the northern outskirts of Niigata, a seaport on the Sea of Japan along the cold and, during the winter, sub-freezing and snowy west coast of Honshu Island. The city-had a population in 1940 of almost 150,000, but the port and local industries, like many others in Japan at the time, were still far behind most of the western industrialized nations.
PRISONER PERSONNEL
Camp 5B at Niigata was opened on September 3, 1943, with the arrival of 300 P.O.W.'s from Hong Kong. This group was composed mostly of Canadian soldiers with some men of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force and some Dutch sailors, the surviving crewmen of a submarine sunk by the Japanese off Java. This initial contingent had no officers or doctor. They, with about 300 additional P.O.W.'s, had sailed from Hong Kong in the latter part of August on the small two-hold collier, the Manryu Maru, stopping briefly at Taihoku (Taipei), the capital of Formosa (Taiwan), en route to Japan. Upon their safe arrival at Osaka the 500 prisoners were split up, with one group sent by train to Niigata and the remainder to other camps in Japan.
On or about September 10, 1943, 800 American P.O.W.'s were taken from