John Judson Campbell left New Jersey as a young sailor, bound for the Philippines in a war that would swallow him whole. On March 30, 82 years after his death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, he finally comes home.
The Navy will bury Chief Electrician’s Mate Campbell with full military honors at Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains at noon, a final journey that began when his submarine tender was scuttled to prevent its capture by Japanese forces in 1942. Rear Adm. Charles M. “Mike” Brown, Reserve Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, will serve as flag officer at the ceremony.
Campbell, born in Plainfield on April 7, 1904, enlisted in the Navy in New York City in 1924 at age 20.
Over the next 18 years, he rose through the ranks, serving aboard battleships, submarines, and submarine tenders, eventually earning promotion to chief electrician’s mate in 1939. His electrical expertise kept ships running, communications open and gyro compasses on course.
On May 18, 1940, he reported for duty aboard the submarine tender USS Canopus at Cavite Navy Yard in the Philippines. The ship would become his home for the next two years, and eventually, his grave site in all but name.
When Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Campbell and his shipmates learned they were at war. Ten hours later, Japanese bombers struck American installations on Luzon. The Canopus crew worked tirelessly to repair damaged ships as bombs fell around them.
By Dec. 22, Japanese troops were storming ashore for a full-scale invasion. Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered American and Filipino forces to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula, hoping to hold out until reinforcements arrived. None came.
On Christmas Day, Canopus sailed to Mariveles at the tip of Bataan. Japanese bombers struck the ship on Dec. 29 and again on Jan. 1, but Campbell and his fellow sailors kept working.
They rigged smoke pots around the hull during daylight to create the illusion of a crippled vessel, hiding the fact that below decks, they were still repairing engines, charging submarine batteries, and keeping the fight alive.
When the situation grew desperate, Canopus sailors formed a naval battalion and fought alongside Army troops on Bataan’s front lines. They held out until April 9, 1942, when American forces formally surrendered.
The night before, Canopus received orders to scuttle. The crew backed the ship into deep water in Mariveles Bay and abandoned her. On April 10, she sank beneath the surface, taking with her the home Campbell had known for nearly two years.
After the surrender, the Japanese marched their prisoners north in what became known as the Bataan Death March, a 65-mile ordeal of brutality and exhaustion. By summer, Campbell and thousands of other prisoners had been crammed into Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province.
The camp held 8,000 Americans and Filipinos at its peak. Food and clean water were fantasies. Malaria and dysentery swept through the prisoners like fire through dry grass.
Campbell fell ill with amebic dysentery and entered the camp hospital on Aug. 18. He died 10 days later, on Aug. 28, 1942. Fellow prisoners buried him in a common grave in the camp cemetery, one of approximately 2,800 Americans who perished at Cabanatuan before liberation in early 1945.
At the time of his burial, grave markers didn’t exist. The Japanese eventually permitted prisoners to beautify the cemetery in February 1943, and survivors of burial details reconstructed a plot map from memory. Campbell was recorded as buried in plot CG 305 alongside two other prisoners.
When American forces liberated the camp in early 1945, they found a graveyard full of bones that couldn’t be identified. Campbell’s remains stayed there, anonymous among thousands, while his family waited for news that never came.
After the war, American forces recovered remains from Cabanatuan and elsewhere. Many were identified. Many were not. The chaos of wartime burials, incomplete records, and limited forensic tools left thousands unidentified.
For decades afterward, his name was etched into the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, one of more than 36,000 Americans whose bodies were never recovered from that theater of war.
Campbell’s name was among them.
But forensic science caught up with history. In 2019, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency researchers requested the disinterment of remains associated with plot CG 305. They exhumed the unknowns from Manila and began the painstaking work of DNA analysis, historical research, and dental comparison.
On Aug. 9, 2024, they made the identification: Chief Electrician’s Mate John Judson Campbell, United States Navy.
The sailor who enlisted at 20, who served through the rise of war, who kept electrical systems running as bombs fell around him, who fought on Bataan and survived the Death March, only to die in a prison camp, is finally coming home.
His family, now living in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, will attend the burial. They have agreed to speak with reporters afterward.
Campbell’s awards include the Combat Action Ribbon, Prisoner of War Medal, Good Conduct Medal, American Defense Service Medal with Fleet Clasp, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with Bronze Star, Army Distinguished Unit Badge with Oak Leaf Cluster, World War II Victory Medal, and American Campaign Medal.
Campbell’s home of record is listed as Wisconsin in military files, but his roots are here, in Plainfield, in Union County, in the New Jersey dirt where he grew up before the war pulled him halfway around the world.
The sailor shipped out expecting to fight. He did, until there was no fight left. Then he died in captivity and was buried in a hole with strangers. Eighty-three years later, they dug him up, figured out who he was, and sent him home.
March 30. Hillside Cemetery. Noon.
After all this time, John Campbell finally gets a grave with his name on it.
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