Three Came Home

by Agnes Newton Keith

  At Jesselton a smartly dressed Japanese officer in militarycape, with a sleek head and a svelte figure, came on boardasking for Keith. It was 8 a.m,, it had rained all night, I waswet, dirty, ack, miserable. I stood up and bowed as slightly asI dared, with a grim, dead-pan egression.

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  This was Lieutenant Nagai. He brought a letter from hiswife in Yokohama, who had read my book in Japanese. Shehad asked him to help me, if he ever met me as a prisoner,and to give me her regards. He had heard that the womenprisoners were being moved from Berhala by this boat, andhad come to give me the message, and ask if he could doanything for me.

  I thanked him, and told him that the food was very bad —would he ask the authorities to give us fruit or milk for thechildren? He said he could not effect any change over ourconditions as he had no authority over us, but he would tryto bring me some eggs for George. I guessed that I had puthim on the spot; he was neither big enough to help meopenly, nor small enough to be able to do so secretly. I didn’tthink that I would see him again, nor did I, until one yearlater.

  At Labuan we were allowed on the wharf for a walk. Oneof the military police came up to me, and said he had readmy book and would like to do something for me. Again I saidwe needed food. He disappeared. Shortly afterward he re-turned, and with some display of guile and legerdemain, heslipped me some cake and fruit, without the other militarypolicemen seeing. Later on, my soldier with the glasses broughta tin of miUc for George. He had with him a soldier friend,to whom he introduced me as “My friend Keith, who writes.”

  We laid alongside a captured Philippine Island ship. Therewere Filipino prisoners below decks. W^e whispered to themin the dark, but we were more willing to communicate thanthey.

  Nine days after we left Berhala Island, we arrived at themouth of the Sarawak River. In the gloom of the dawn wepoked silentiy up the dark slow-moving stream between themud banks and the nipa palms. Grouched on the deck in therain I thought of James Brooke, the first White Rajah, who

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  had blended in Sarawak and in his person the romance of Eastand West. Had he seen Sarawak as I did now, I wondered,wet, nauseated, with diarrhea, a cold in the head, and fever,from the deck of a prison ship, would he have seen any possi-bilities in it? I certainly didn’t.

  Imprisoned Sisters

  Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, lies two degrees above theequator, on the West Coast of Borneo.

  Here in the jungle aboriginal, just over one hundred yearsago, James Brooke, a young English officer, captured hisdream of a white-owned, native-benefiting state to be his very,very own. Here he purchased his kingdom by fighting for it,here he worked and sweated and prayed, and almost lost hislife. Here he earned his knighthood, while building a tradi-tion of White Rajahdom which lives, while soldiers die.

  He was followed by two Rajah Brookes — Charles John-son and Charles Vyner —who wed, and bred, and lived inthe Astana there — sometimes gayly, sometimes sadly, but al-ways regally. These handsome Westerners ruled an Orientalkingdom where scenery, costumes, and temperament met inexotic design, where monkeys and race horses, jungles andpianos, mixed harmoniously. Here the white man assumedthe highest title, and the native retained the say. Here theRajah and Ranee of Sarawak made headlines, when Borneonever did.

  Under the Rajahs and Ranees of the Brooke family,Kuching became famous for its night life. Asiatics were wel-come to shine. Oriental women in bizarre costumes stole theshow from drab ladies from home, beauty was its own re-ward, and dullness was not confused with virtue. People who

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  went to the Astana, the Rajah’s palace, had fun; were amused;stayed awake; a shocking condition of aflFairs for Far East so-cial life!

  In 1940, Kuching celebrated a centenary of progress.Vacuum cleaners, radios, refrigerators, loud-speakers, cleanpolitics, cigarette lighters, jazz bands, free speech, and suf-frage became as common there as any place, and prosperitycame right around the comer and sat down with native princes.Ranees, and Residents.

  Into the bosom of this happy fairuly scene came the Japs,in December 1941.

  And here, as prisoners of the Japs on January 20, 1943,came the women and children of Sandakan, wet, sick andmiserable, on a murky morning at dawn.

  Came here to Kuching, which lies on the equator, sweatsand swelters on the equator, poiars with rain and shakes withthunder on the equator, and which, so far as my money goes,can continue to do so forever without me again.

  Kuching is about twenty-two miles up the Sarawak Riverfrom the sea, and our prison camps were located three milesoutside of Kuching. Here was the headquarters in Borneofor all Allied prisoners of war and internees. Here ColonelSuga, Commander of all Prisoners of War and Internees, whomI had first met on Berhala, had his headquarters, and acted inloco parentis to the camps.

  We remet on my second day in Kuching, when I askedColonel Suga to return to me a portable t5q)ewriter whichhad been confiscated from a friend by the Japanese office.I said the typewriter was mine, hoping to get it back underheading of “Patronage to Art.” Suga didn’t release it, then,but I got it in the end.

  Lieutenant Nekata was the local boss, under Suga, of ourcamps, and never failed to assert himself as such. We soonlearned that these two were constantly at variance; both had

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  favorites, but never the same favorites. To be a friend ofSuga was to be singled out by Nekata for trouble, though itdid not work inversely. Nekata had a long, thin, drab, blankface, trained to hide all human intelligence, although I be-lieve he had some.

  Our camp, known as Bam Lintang, was composed of eightseparate camps. Four of these prison camps, and the Japaneseoffices, were grouped about a square. From this square radi-ated the roads that led to the other camps, and in it stood thesentry who controlled the roads; across it drove ColonelSuga’s motor car, through it passed the Japanese soldiers, andin it the prisoners worked. This square was the place forspeeches, celebrations, commemoration of Japanese victoriesand holidays, place of punishment and pillory. This squarewas the core of prison camp life; the best and the most beastlyof captivity took place there.

  Each of the eight camps in Kuching was as completelysegregated from each of the others as the Nipponese couldmake it. But —armed guards, barbed wire, rules and pun-ishments, to the contrary — they could not stop secret contactbetween camps, and this the Japanese officers always feared.At times there were very few Nipponese soldiers under armsin Kuching, and they were anxious to avoid trouble fromour camps.

  Sometimes various hotheads tried to incite rebellion amongstthe men, but we knew that this could only end in murder forall of us. In the beginning the Nipponese had come vic-toriously into Borneo because they controlled the air and thesea, and so long as they continued to control the air and thesea they would stay there. Any hostile move the prisoners inBorneo made would probably be suicide.

  The aggregate population of the eight Kuching camps,both prisoners of war and internees, was at this time over3000 persons. The divisions and persoimel of the variouscamps were as follows: Australian officers and N.C.O.S,

  SeJtv^ .oA

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  British officers, Dutch officers, British soldiers, Indonesians,civilian men, Roman Catholic priests, and the women andchildren.

  In the women’s camp in Kuching we joined women andchildren from other parts of Borneo, to form an aggregatepopulation of 242 persons. Although in one camp, we livedin three community groups: 120 Dutch Roman Catholic nuns,20 English Roman Catholic nuns, 73 women, and 29 chil-dren. Some months later we were joined by 12 more Britishand Dutch women, 20 Sisters, and 6 children. Malay was thecommon language in camp between Dutch and Englishpeople.

  Here we were housed in five very small barracks, with anapproximate living space for each person of four feet by sixfeet, without partitions or privacy. We had three sets oflatrines, built over pits, emptied sometimes by
ourselves,sometimes by British soldiers.

  The best thing that happened to me in captivity happenedhere in Kuching: I was thrown into close contact with acommunity of Roman CathoKc nuns. Before this I really knewnothing about them, except through the three on BerhalaIsland, Mother Rose, Sister Clitus, and Sister Frances Mary.They were white-robed, soft-spoken, touched by divinity,apart from us — but they scarcely seemed human.

  Now in Kuching I met nuns as women, and sisters, andmothers, hard workers, and my friends. Here I met them aspeople who sang, and laughed, and made jokes and hadfun. As people who prayed and fasted as a privilege and joy,not as a duty. As women who had chosen a way of life, nothad it thrust on them, and who loved it. As women whonever, never refused to give help. As women who were sorryfor Its, merciful to us, tried to help us, because they had theWay and the Life; while we, poor fleshly creatures of thisworld and now cut off from this world, had nothing.

  We secular women living with our own sex had already

  tested ourselves, and found ourselves wanting. We could notget on without men, their stimuktion, comfort, companion-ship. I say companionship, because very soon, with poor food,hard work, and nervous strain, that was aU we had the sexualstrength to long for, or to oflFer.

  But the Sisters were diiferent, they were complete. Theywere wedded to Christ and the Church, and for the first timein my life in Kuching, I saw that this was so. Then for thefirst time it became credible to me that they were Holy Brides.They formed in general a background of prayer and peace,for the rest of our world which was mad.

  The thing that struck me first of aU was that the Sisterswere happy; next, resourceful; third, they were holy; andfinally they, like ourselves, could sometimes be hysterical.

  The English Sisters were from convents at Sandakan, Jessd-ton, and Kuching, twenty of them to begin with, and fortywhen some months later the Japanese interned the nursingSisters who had been working in the Kuching hospital forthe Japanese.

  The English Sisters wore white robes with white veils.When they were cooking or working they tucked these veilsbehind their ears like little dust caps, rolled up their sleeves,and folded up their skirts to keep them out of the dirt; thenthe Sisters looked like white naplms folded into fancy shapes.

  The Dutch Sisters were working missionaries, and they

  lived in three groups in camp, and came from different partsof Dutch Borneo. They wore gray robes, and black andwhite pin-striped ones like pillow ticking. Another smallgroup of about ten Dutch Sisters were the Slot Sisters, theHoliest of the Holy: they were contemplatives, and onlyprayed and thought. In peacetime their only contact with theworld was through a slot in the gate. They were of the orderof Poor Clares, possessing nothing, wishing nothing, andprison camp was the ideal place for them. They wore heavybrownish robes like sacking.

  All these costumes, except those of the Poor Clares, werethe tropical-climate workday costumes. On special feast day^the Sisters brought out their rusty, black, home habits, dustedthem off, put them on, and looked at each other with satis-faction — Ae same satisfaction that we showed when we gotdressed up and went to meet our husbands.

  As our clothes wore out we made shorts out of trousers,play dresses out of skirts, short dresses out of long ones, andfinally left large open spaces, becoming gradually moreand more visible ourselves. But as the Sisters’ habits wore outthey had to remain invisible, so as the material of the habitdisappeared, it was replaced by a hand-sewn patchwork ofpieces — sometimes not all white.

  Finally when they had no gowns left for sickness, or emer-gency use, or bed, they were forced to acquire some of the col-ored clothes from the secular women, and I think they thor-oughly enjoyed the excuse to use color. I held a lottery oncefor a royal blue dinner dress, and it was won by a Dutch Sis-ter who made it into a handsome gardening frock which shewore while distributing manure. She told me she enjoyedwearing it immensely because it was such a nice color.

  The first thing I did when I got to Kuching was to sell mythree sheets for five dollars each to the Sisters for habits.

  The smart thing for each mother to do was to get herselfadopted by a Sister, as the Sisters were unfailingly kind-

  hearted, and hard workers. The Sister was then referred toas “your” Sister, and came around on feast days with extrasof food for your child, helped you to do sewing, helped youto plant a garden, helped you to work, and helped you toworry.

  My Sister was Sister Claudia, a Dutch Sister, ten years olderthan I, with snapping black eyes which held both peace andchallenge, and beautiful chiseled features. Sister Claudia was al-ways ready to give me practical help, but the best thing shedid for me really was to exist as a lovely and lovable person.

  Here in this first Kuching camp we now had twenty-ninechildren. The eight eldest children, then six to nine yearsold, were being taught lessons for two hours a day by SisterDominica, an Irish Free State Sister and a gifted teacher.

  The Sandakan children were younger, and we motherslonged to have them join the ranks of pupils, but Sister Do-minica could not take any more, nor could she teach widelyassorted ages. There were other British Sister teachers incamp, but the community work was too heavy for them to bespared for teaching.

  The Sisters were great on singing and fun. Usually I lovedthe feast days: the singing of high, sweet, reedy voices, thedeeper-toned murmur of prayer; the clatter of dishes andparty food (where they got it, God only knew, but they gotit!), the laughter and dancing and mellowness that spread tothe people around. Usually I loved the feast days.

  But some days, as life grew grimmer, I found myself wish-ing that they’d quit singing, with nothing to smg for, frommy point of view.

  TTiey prayed for peace, believed it would come; set dates,and hours and deadlines for it — and when it didn’t come theysaid “Thy will be done,” and prayed again. They reconciledthemselves, either by strong faith, or by delusion. They werehappy, either because they didn’t know any better, or be-cause what we knew better, and what kept us from being

  happy, was wrong. Anyway, they were happy, when therest of us beat vainly against the bars of our prison.

  I couldn’t be Roman Catholic myself because I ask Whytoo frequently. I can’t be anything, but sometimes I’d liketo be. It is so restful to give up the struggle and relax in beliefin The Word.

  All through camp life I studied the Sisters and loved them,and I tried very hard to learn. I learned one thing: that itisn’t any particular sect or religion that gives one strength. It isputting your mind on something outside of yourself, thatyou believe is good. We wives had put our minds and ourhearts on our husbands, which is what a good marriage is, andwe now were without them, and lost. The Sisters had puttheir minds and hearts on God only, and they had Him, andthey only were whole.

  Mother Bemardine, a fragile, other-world-looldng EnglishSister from the Kuching convent, was the camp master forthe entire women’s community. The Japanese at this timerefused to deal with any representative of the secular com-munity. The Sisters were well organized and disciplined, andoutwardly accepted Japanese edict with better grace andmore obedience than we, who were never reconciled.

  The Sisters were deferential to the lawgivers, and acted asif they took the Japanese seriously, but they perpetrated thebiggest and best smuggling deals in camp. The Sisters werecommanded to supply a sewing party to sew for the Japaneseofficers and soldiers, working daily in a barrack near theJapanese office. They did this, not unhappily, often with agossipy amusement, and always philosophically. All men werealike in the eyes of God, either enemy or friend, they said.

  But some days soldiers came into the room, stripped theirclothes off, told the Sisters to mend them, and sat about un-clad. Then one day the sergeant major came in, took off histrousers, told the nuns to mend them, and went to the comerof the room and urinated.

  Now no one could like that, the Sisters said. Still, he didgo to the corner, they agreed.

  In conversation with me, Colonel Suga frequently referredto the Roman Catholics a
s being without race prejudice, whichbelief I am sure prejudiced him in their favor. A RomanCathohc priest from the near-by camp was permitted dailyto come into our camp at 7 a.m., to hold mass. A Church ofEngland priest and a Dutch Protestant priest were sometimesallowed to hold service in the women’s camp on Sundays, butnever regularly.

  When we arrived at Kuching Mother Bemardine and thecamp doctor were the only two females permitted to havecontact with the Japanese authorities. Mother Bemardinewas a delicate creature whose starched robes, made stiff andshiny with rice-water and ironed with the heavy charcoal-burning iron which the sisters owned, looked as if they hadmore body than she. Her delicate, lined face grew from thethroat of her habit, and her reed-like wrists with the thin,blue-veined hands drooped from her full white sleeves. Thatshe could do the job of camp representative, which requiredmany interviews with the Japanese, seemed unbelievable.

  When our presence enlarged the camp community, a repre-sentative was elected by the secular women, to work withMother Bemardine, though she was not supposed to deal withthe Japanese. This representative was Dorie Adams, fromJesselton, the wife of the British Commandant of Armed Con-stabulary, Borneo’s only armed force.

  She was a slender, shy, medium-sized, medium-aged womanwith short, wavy brovm hak with a gray streak, and greeneyes, a woman who never sought notice. How she happenedto be elected I do not remember. She was not the leader type.I decided afterward that it was certainly fate guiding us. Iam sure no other woman in camp would ever have had thepatience to put up with us, and the Japanese, both.

  Soon after our arrival in Kuching Mother Bemardine’s ill-

  health required her to turn over active management of camplife to Dorie; and, as her assistant, Dorie was permitted bythe Japanese to deal with them as a temporary measure only.But when they knew her, even the Japanese could not butlike and admire her. Mother Bemardine was never able toresume active management of camp, and Dorie from then onwas camp master.