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Baxter 9
local pilferage the short rations were brought into camp cold. No water supply had been installed, which necessitated bringing water into the camp in large wooden barrels.
At 0200 hours on New Year's morning, 1944, only a week after we had arrived at this horrendous, unfinished facility, one of the barracks collapsed during a heavy blizzard with sixty sleeping P.O.W.'s inside, killing ten and seriously injuring seven.
Despite all the deaths and turmoil in camp and the sub-freezing, snowy conditions outside, the twelve-hour work details continued as usual. The P.O.W.'s, ravaged by disease, hunger and the lack of proper clothing, continued to die daily. By mid-January, 1944, the Japanese acknowledged the obvious failure of the second camp and relocated the prisoners to their third place of residence in four months. With this move the original camp was split into two sections.
The prisoners detailed to Shintetsu (the iron foundry group) were now billeted in a building near the foundry and had no contact with the P.O.W.'s in the other two work parties until after the war ended. The remaining prisoners, those in the Rinko coal yard and the Marutsu dock details, were moved to a large compound surrounded by a twelve-foot board wall topped by barbed wire, and here they remained for their last eighteen months of internment at Niigata.
This permanent camp contained, four large wooden barracks for the P.O.W.'s and two smaller buildings. One of the latter housed about 35 American, British, and Canadian officers (who were excused by the Japanese from labor details) and the other, the Japanese commandant and soldiers. To the front and near the front gate entrance was the guard house (which consisted of two solitary cell blocks), a shack utilized as a hospital and first aid dispensary (with nothing to dispense), a kitchen, and a large communal bath house, which we prisoners were never allowed to use until the war was almost over. The latrines were in the