BAXTER, Albert Edward


No.5831163, Private, Albert Edward BAXTER
Aged 26


1st Battalion, Cambridgeshire Regiment
Died at Sea in Captivity on Thursday, 21st September 1944


Born 6th July 1916 in West Ham 4a:265, son of James John and Emily C BAXTER (née TAYLOR) of Fox Street, West Ham and later 9 Holderness Road, Bury St.Edmunds

He was captured at the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese on 15th February 1942.

He was part of a group to be sent to Borneo on the Hofuku Maru. This old ship was forced to call in at Manila, where it waited for a month with the prisoners still kept below in the hold, many dying of starvation and disease.
Eventually,on September 20, 1944, the Hofuko Maru [KA-27] (with 1,289 prisoners on board) and 10 other ships formed Convoy MATA-27, and sailed from Manila for Japan. The following morning, the convoy was attacked by an American aircraft carrier about 80 miles north of Corregidor, the aircraft carrier’s planes sunk the whole convoy. Of the 1,289 British and Dutch POWs on board the Hofuku Maru, 1,047 died.








photo C.W.G.C.


Albert Baxter is commemorated on the Singapore Memorial column 58

click here to go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for full cemetery/memorial details


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