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4
Baxter 12
The Shintetsu iron foundry detail did general labor within this primitive and hazardous facility. The only advantage to working at the foundry was that it was an inside job and warm in the winter months. In mid-January, 1944, the men working in this group were moved to a new building near the foundry, and they remained separated from the other P.O.W.'s at Camp 5B until the war ended.
The Marutsu dock detail did the work of stevedores on the Niigata piers.
This job was considered the choicest of the three, since it provided the prisoners with an opportunity to pilfer food and other valuable commodities shipped home from the occupied lands of the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.
During the later part of my confinement, ten or more prisoners of war in the Marutsu dock detail discovered an open case containing one-gallon cans of a liquid mixture that tasted like pure corn whiskey; unfortunately, that night at least six men died a horrible death after drinking the liguid. We were told later by Dr. Stewart that what was thought to have been whiskey was actually aviation antifreeze.
MEDICAL FACILITIES
When the camp opened, only Cpl. Takeo Takahashi, a Japanese Medical Corps-man, was in charge of P.O.W. health care. A vain, pompous, compassionless little man, Takahashi had been a dental assistant before the war, and he made no attempt to hide his hate for the prisoners. In the two months prior to the arrival, on October 30, 1943, of Dr. Stewart twelve of the original Canadian prisoners had already died because of the lack of medicine, the inadeguate food, overwork in unsafe conditions, and the total incompetence of Cpl. Takahashi.
Major Stewart set up a thirty-mat sick bay in a room in the barracks, but despite his best efforts many of the men during the first winter developed pneumonia and died as the result of a lack of warm clothing and shoes. The P.O.W.'s were issued one pair of rice-straw boots every third day, but these