Three Came Home

by Agnes Newton Keith

  Three Came Home

  Three Came Home

  Three Came Home

  Agnes Newton Keith

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  00306

  ,r-

  6768

  MAR 21

  JAN

  1967

  By Agnes Newton Keith

  LAND BELOW THE WIND

  THREE CAME HOME

  THREE CAME HOME

  LA-

  COPYRIGHT 1946, 1947, by AGNES NEWTON KEITH

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHTTO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONSTHEREOF IN ANY FORM

  EIGHTEENTH PRINTING

  ATLANTIO-LITTLE, BROWN BOOKSARE PUBLISHED BYLITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANYIN ASSOCIATION WITHTHE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS

  'Published simultaneouslyin Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For My Husband —for Every Reason

  U.^^o

  I HAVE written this book for three reasons;

  For horror of war. I want others to shudder with me at it.

  For affection for my husband. When war nearly killed me,knowledge of our love kept me alive.

  And for a reminder to my son. I fought one war for him inprison camp. He survives because of me. He belongs now topeace. I remind him that it is better to give more and to haveless — and to keep the peace — than to fight.

  The Japanese in this book are as war made them, not asGod did, and the same is true of the rest of us. We are notpleasant people here, for the story of war is always the storyof hate; it makes no difference with whom one fights. Thehate destroys you spiritually as the fighting destroys youbodily.

  If there are tears shed here, they are for the death of goodfeeling. If there is horror, it is for those who speak indiffer-ently of “the next war.” If there is hate, it is for hateful quali-ties, not nations. If there is love, it is because this alone keptme alive and sane.

  A. N. K.

  Foreword

  One day after we were imprisoned on Berhala Island, NorthBorneo, a little short man, very clean and neat, and very mili-tary, arrived on the broken-down wharf. This, we were told,was Major Suga, the Japanese Commander of aU Prisonersof War and all Internees in all Borneo.

  We were mustered at midday in the sun and stood for twohours waiting, while women had hysterics and fainted, chil-dren wept, and men looked very weary. Then Suga came tothe prison compound and spoke: “Try to be happy and con-tent, keep up your morals, and be healthy. I am sorry for you.You must learn to live under discipline. You may be movedto Kuching, Sarawak, where my headquarters are. The prison-ers there are happy. It will be a long war, so make up yourminds to do as you are told. Don’t complain, be good, obey,keep up your morals, keep well, and be happy.”

  After tlus speech the representatives of the two camps askedfor interviews with him. They complained of the conditionswe were living in. Major Suga said, “Is zat so? Well, you arewell treated now!” They said we could not endure the life.He said, “Is zat so? Well, you will learn!”

  He commanded me to a private interview at the guard-house. Being guilty of many misdemeanors, I feared it mightbe for punishment. I took George with me as a maternaltouch, and because George wanted to go. I expected stern-ness, if not violence. Instead Suga treated me with courtesy,one of the few Japanese officers who ever did.

  While he talked I studied him with interest. He had thebrief stature which we consider Japanese, and was built with-

  XU

  Foreword

  out angles, but not fat. His head was round and his face el-liptical in contrast to the rectangular block of the averageAnglo-Saxon head. His forehead was unlined and low, andhe had weU-defined, rather thick lips. His hair was stiff andblack and shaven close, his mustache military, and his beardincipient only. When he spoke of abstract subjects his browneyes were pleasant and straight, but when he talked of thewar they glittered and became cold. By watching his eyesI could tell what subjects to avoid.

  He told me that he had read my book. Land Belon) theWind, in the Japanese translation, and that he liked it, andasked me if I had the Western edition. I told him that his sol-diers had stolen it from my house, and he said, “Is zat so? ThenI take it from my soldiers.”

  He told me that he was a graduate of the University ofWashington in the United States, and asked me why Ameri-cans were prejudiced against the Japanese. I told him it wasbecause cheap Japanese labor threatened ours, and that itwas an economic prejudice. He replied that this was only asmall part of it; he said, “They exclude us because of labor,but they despise us because we are Japanese. You know thatthis is so.”

  I did know it. I could only answer that I myself had noracial prejudices, that before the war I had believed that Ihad real friends amongst the Japanese, that they had re-jected me after the war, rather than I them.

  I said that in wartime we were all trained by nationalpropaganda to hate the enemy, as otherwise we were unwill-ing to kill, and be kUled. He and I were now being trainedthus to hate each other, but perhaps after the war we mightmeet as human beings again.

  He then said to me, “You are writing a book about yourlife here?”

  I said, “How can I? You have taken my pencils and paperaway.”

  Fore'word xiii

  “Ah, so. I will give back to you. You shall write a bookfor me, and I shall censor it.”

  “I work too hard here in camp to write. I don’t have timeor energy to write.”

  “But that is the best time to write, when you are busy.When many good and bad things happen to you, then youhave good and bad thoughts. Then is the time to write. Yes,I think you intend to write a book here. Some day you shallwrite one for me.”

  In time we were moved to Kuching, and there I saw Suga,who was Colonel Suga now, frequently. At every meetinghe brought up the subject of my writing for him, and naggedme constantly to do so.

  I told him this was impossible because of the heavy workwe had to do and because I had no materials. He said hewould make it possible — he would lessen my work, he wouldgive me writing materials; that I would write for him, andhe would censor the product.

  Always he stressed the fact that he would censor. Alwayshe questioned me if I was writing myself.

  One afternoon he called me to his office and p
roduced anAmerican copy of my book with my name in it, taken frommy house by Mr. Maeda, and taken from Mr. Maeda by Suga.He opened it to the foreword about the lion and the lamb,and asked me to explain the meaning of this. I did so. He thenrequested me to “give” the book to him by writing his namein it, and drawing a picture on the flyleaf. He pulled Harry’sfountain pen out of his pocket, and handed it to me to drawwith.

  After the purpose of art had been served, the orderly pro-duced pineapple, biscuits, and very sweet coffee for us.Then Suga broke the news.

  “You are going to write ‘The Life and Thoughts of anInternee’ for me in your spare time. That is my wish. Do notargue,” he said.

  xiv Foreword

  I replied that I had no spare time, no materials, no thoughts,etc., etc. For a few minutes the tone of the conversation re-mained friendly, then he became Colonel Suga, Commandantof Prisoners of War and Internees in Borneo.

  “It is my command that you do tliis,” he said. “I order it.I give you all materials. If need be, I release you from othercamp work. Do not talk further about this. It is my order.”

  I said, “If you order me to write, I must write. But you can-not order me what to say.”

  “M right! All right! AU right! AU right!”

  Then he gave me pen, ink, pencil, and paper, and orderedthe office to release a confiscated typewriter to my use, andtold me to go.

  I did not sleep easily that night. I did not know what usehe might intend to make of what I wrote, and I feared thatmy words might be turned against me by one side or theother. I knew that I was needed for community camp work,as we never had enough able-bodied people for the jobs, butI knew also that I could not do the work and produce writ-ten material for Suga at the same time. But experience hadtaught me that the choice was not mine to make.

  The next day an order came to our camp master that I wasto be released from community camp work by Suga’s order.The Japanese office was to pay three dollars a month into ourcommunity fund as my salary. I was to continue doing part-time work in camp as a substitute for women who becameilL

  So I wrote for Colonel Suga. I titled it “Captivity,” and Itold the truth, but not all the truth. There was much whichfor my own sake and that of others in camp I could not say,and there were also things that I did not dare to say to Suga;he could be very much the Oriental Potentate at times.

  But he stood more than I believed he would. I complainedpersistently of wrongs and mistreatments, I constantly askedfor better food and less work. I said that I believed trouble

  Foreword xv

  between our races was based on misunderstanding, and thatI hoped for tolerance and sympathy in time to come, betweenour peoples. I said that I believed Suga did what he could dofor our women’s camp. And that, as he was kindhearted towomen and children, please could we have some more food?This story was submitted to Suga at given intervals.

  But there was another story also that I wrote in captivity.

  This story I wrote in the smallest possible handwriting, onthe backs of labels, on old Chinese papers that our tobaccocame in, on the margins of old newspapers given us by theJapanese . . . and when I could get it, on Colonel Suga’spaper. I stuffed George’s toys with these notes, I sewed alayer of them in his sleeping mat, I stuffed his pillows, andI put them in tins which I buried under the barrack.

  The Japanese searched my things frequently, turning insideout my suitcase, reading my papers upside down, when theydid not read English. In time I lost everything with writing onit: documents, passport, wedding lines, bank receipts — every-thing except my notes.

  From these notes I have reconstructed the true story ofmy captivity. This is not the story I wrote at Suga’s com-mand, it is my story.

  Contents

  Foreword

  xi

  I

  To Us a Son

  3

  II

  Dark Hours

  29

  III

  Strange Nursery

  45

  IV

  Malaria

  70

  V

  Happy New Year

  86

  VI

  Imprisoned Sisters

  96

  VII

  Working My Way

  117

  VIII

  Getting Rid of Proudery and Arrogance

  142

  IX

  Suga Babies at Play

  165

  X

  Children of Captivity

  180

  XI

  The Enemy

  193

  XII

  Endurance

  2II

  xin

  Last Gasp

  234

  XIV

  Fallen Enemy

  254

  XV

  Old Lady

  269

  XVI

  September ii, 1945

  278

  XVII

  Road Home

  289

  XVIII

  Three Together

  303

  THREE CAME HOME

  To Us a Son

  We had always wanted a son. On our honeymoon we hadfed coppers to the golden Buddhas in die temples of fecundityall over Japan, for one. We had planted bamboos in the gardenat home, and waited for them to shoot, as a symbol to us of ason. We had even gone so far as to ask a doctor. “No reason,”he said, “why not?” But Buddhas, bamboos, and babies wereslow, there was something wrong with communications; ittook six years from prayer to answer.

  On April 5, 1940, in Sandakan, North Borneo, HenryGeorge Newton Keith, called George, was born. To quote amasculine friend, this was accomplished with the minimumamount of effort. Certainly not as much effort as it had re-quired to finish La?id Beloiv the Wind the year before.

  Land Beloav the Wind was a book about Borneo, writtenbecause I was happily married to a man, a country, and anidea. The Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculturein Civil Service in North Borneo was my husband; Borneo wasthe country, and The Far East Is Human was the idea.

  I had lived in Borneo with my husband, an Englishman whodoesn’t hke being described, since 1934. When I started towrite a book, he said he hated travel books by women becausethey were full of women instead of travel, and they were in-accurate. I had to admit that after four years in Borneo there

  4

  Three Came Home

  was a lot I didn’t know that he did, but what I did know hadhit me in the eye.

  In the warm, sticky, sweet-smelling heat of the equator,Borneo was more fantastic than fiction, because it was real. Ifelt the monsoons blowing, half the year one way, half the

  other, but always blowing; I felt the warm rain coming instreams, the hot sun steaming through; I saw many shades ofhuman beings, drinking, eating, sleeping, sweating, loving,hating, living their private lives like me, under a moon like ayellow melon, under a sun like a pale grapefruit, on theequator, and in the impenetrable, much-penetrated jungles.

  I saw a civilization where the head-hunters of Borneo stillhunted heads, the Moro pirates still came down from thePhilippines to loot, the Murats still wore their hair long andwent naked; where civil government was a Chartered Com-pany, the Crown ruled but the Company paid salary, and let-ters from home were six weeks on the way.

  Here British Colonial life lived itself placidly and withoutconfusion as British life should, on the edge of the Borneojungles, by the blue tepid waters of Sulu and China Seas. Here

  5

  To Us a Son

  Social Club, Golf Club, Tennis Club, Squash Club, BridgeClub, Rugger and polo and soccer, made British the day; butthe heavy scents of night-blooming tropical trees, kenanga,chempaka, frangipani. Cassia fistula, and sundal malam, madeexotic and languorous the nights.

  Here rogue elephants, monkeys, apes, otters, and musangs,natives of Borneo, Muruts and Dusuns, went their unclad,uninhibited way regardless, while Empire builders and theirconsorts drank tea, wore black ties, played cri
cket, sanghymns, and kept Christmas, and grew more Scotch, and moreEnglish, the longer they hved from home.

  Such was the town life of North Borneo in its capital,Sandakan, with fifteen thousand Asiatics, seventy Europeans.

  When the life of a lady palled on me, and being a gentle-man made my husband into the opposite, we would be calledout of town. Then together we went up the cool Borneorivers, white rapids and streams, through its jungles, acrossits mountains, over its plains; meeting and knowing its people;seeing, feeling, tasting adventure; sick and tired sometimes,sometimes hating it, swearing I’d never go again — but alwaysgoing, and loving it, too, while the Conservator of Forestsand Director of Agriculture made trees grow where beforethey were not.

  It was a good life, it was a life of joy to remember, it wasmy first four years in Borneo; it was the Land Below theWind.

  Then leave came, eight months at home; I could just getthere. I had malaria and typhoid, I had my book in a suitcasehalf-done — half-done, like me.

  We arrived home, I came to life and finished the book,and it won a prize. Before it was accepted, the publishers in-sisted on a chapter of autobiography and data, saying that theAmerican reading public was fact-loving, and liked to knowits authors. Harry was nervous. He said that writing auto-biography truthfully was like letting a stranger into bed with

  you. I could only reply that my experience was more limitedabout that than his.

  The book crisis finally being solved by letting the strangerinto bed with us, the following facts were sent to the pub-lishers:

  Although my birth certificate has vanished, my parentsare sure that I was bom, and the evidence points to Oak Park,Illinois. While still helpless, I was carried to Hollywood,California, and there grew up amidst lemon and orange trees,and innocently pushed my doll carriage down dirt lanes whichwere soon to be made famous by celluloid passion.