Three Came Home

by Agnes Newton Keith

  The stretcher is pulled and pushed by half a dozen RomanCatholic priests. Behind them follow some twenty-five Sisters,and a small body of secular friends. By special permission thisfuneral party will be allowed to go on foot to the Kuchingcemetery, about two miles distant from our camp.

  It is high noon, and the sun is blazing. The Sisters in theirwhite robes move slowly in the heat. Many of them wearwoven grass coolie hats, or Dyak hats, balanced on top oftheir white veiled heads. A few carry black cotton umbrellas.

  The procession passes out of our gate and moves on pastthe sentry. Down the road, in front of the men’s clinic, itpauses. Soon it is joined there by another coffin, this onedraped with a Union Jack and carried by soldiers. In it isthe body of a British soldier who has died this morning. Thetropical climate allows for no delay in funeral obsequies.

  Along the road to Kuching travel the two dead bodies.

  Slowly they pass by the pleasant fields, the bending trees,the shinmg sky, the grazing cows, the dogs and cats and birdsand squirrels and free five things — all simple things that speak

  of life and happiness — all things that the two captives havelonged once more to see. Now this today they cannot see.Their eyes are closed, their senses are forever stilled.

  A Sister is dead; a soldier is dead. Two prisoners are freed;two captives have retorned to their Homeland.

  As these eldest and more feeble nuns die off, the eruditeMothers who are left declare that these deaths are a sign ofanother move coming soon. For the Lord in His kindness issparing the sick, the weak, the aged from the exhaustion ofanother camp migration — even from the exhaustion of thatjourney for which we aU pray, the exodus from prison intofreedom.

  Of the soldiers’ deaths we can no longer keep count.

  Here in captivity the natural processes of life are reversed.In the outside world things are born, and things die. Here inthis camp things die; but they are not bom.

  Every change was for the worse. Rules increased, food de-creased, work increased, and strength decreased. Disappoint-ments multiplied, and optimism was never verified. Hope it-self seemed only a refuge for those who would not face facts.

  Our food ration, then, as supplied by the Japanese perperson per day, was as follows: one cupful of thin rice grael,five tablespoons of cooked rice, sometimes a few greens, alittle sugar, sometimes a litde salt, and tea. This was whatthe Japanese expected us to live on. Or did they expect us tolive on it?

  Additions to this diet were sweet-potato tops, which wegrew ourselves. We used the tops because we were too hun-gry to wait for the potatoes to mature. Every square foot ofthe camp was in use for gardens, but the soil was exhausted,and we were exhausted. The last eight months of imprison-ment it was almost impossible for us to do heavy work, butwe did it. We arose before sunrise to finish the work insidecamp, and then went outside the camp to work for the Japa-

  nese. By nine o’clock in the morning we were worn out.

  By now soldiers were trading for and buying skinned catsand rats, people were eating snails and worms, all of us were

  eating weeds and grass, and plenty of us would have liked toeat each other.

  I had meals of banana skins stolen from Japanese refuse bar-rels and boiled into soup.

  March twenty-fifth came like any other day. At lo a.m.two little Poached Egg planes scooted hastily out of theirunderbrush and puttered across the sky. Their shadows

  crossed the field where I dug; I knew how the sun must shineon their red egg centers; I heard them, I didn’t look up.

  Half an hour later we gardeners sat down to rest, heads onhands, cold tea beside us, eyes down. We heard a drone. Thesound grew. The sound swelled. We squinted an eye. Therewere specks above. More Japs? we said. . . . They don’tmake that sotmd! We squinted again. The heavens rolled,the clouds shook, the sky filled — there was the roar of bombon bomb! Not Japs! Not Japs! Not Taps/

  OUR PLANES!

  We believed it. They could be none other but ours. And atthat moment patriotism returned; love of country, love ofour own magnificence, pride of being the biggest and best.

  The planes moved above us in the clear sky, majestic anddeliberate. The sun blazed from their wings, the sky filledwith their sound, and the earth lay helpless beneath. Up anddown Kuching River they bombed, and in the vicinity ofcamp, and then turned unhurriedly and flew away. Therewas no single shot from Nipponese defenses.

  And yet we were not mad with joy, not yet did optimismrevive. In my diary I wrote:

  First Allied planes seen today. Three years ago I would havebeen delirious with joy. Today I have neither energy nor heartfor excitement. Too little food.

  With the Allied Forces over Borneo the Japanese papermoney, known as “banana currency” because of the bananatrees pictured on it, was decreasing rapidly in value. Theguards were becoming anxious to acquire our gold jewelryand diamonds, cotton material of any sort, and men’s clothing,and by this time there was just one thing that mattered to us— food.

  The guards would force the Chinese outside to sell food tothem for cash; and they would then deliver the food to usin exchange for our valuables, or trade the goods to the farmer

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  for the food and keep a cut from food and goods as commis-sion.

  What little jewelry I had with me in camp I had takenfor sentimental reasons. I had my engagement and weddinglings sewed inside the overflap of a blouse pocket, and theseI never parted with. My other pieces were old family keep-sakes of gold, several set with diamonds. I had my sororitypin, which had been especially set in my college days witha diamond from my mother’s ring.

  My first jewelry trade was a heavy gold chain, a keepsakefrom my English grandmother, which I traded for four bot-tles of coconut oil, normal value about ten cents a bottle. Oilwas important, as we had none in our diet.

  I traded an old gold brooch, with a topaz in it, for twokatis (22/3 pounds) of blachang. Blachang is a rotted, native-made fish paste. After liberation, when the American Navycame into camp, I opened my blachang tin and let a sailor takea sniff. If a sailor could faint, he’d have fainted. He said,“Oh, lady, not even a sailor could take that!” But blachangwas rich in protein, and it was salty, and we’d had no salt,and we loved it.

  I traded a gold watchcase of my mother’s, which had beenmade into a locket to hold my mother’s and father’s pictures,for forty eggs, one bottle of oil, and a bottle of Japanesetoothache remedy for George.

  I traded my sorority pin for forty eggs and one bottle ofoil. In normal times eggs had been three cents each. Thistrade meant two eggs and a spoonful of oil every day fortwenty days — safety for three more weeks for George.

  The racket in diamonds was going well until one womangot nervous and broke the market by trading a ring with threediamonds in it for the food value of what the rest of us wereasking for one diamond. This market break took place whileI was making the deal with a Nip guard for my sorority

  pin. He had promised me forty eggs, four botdes of oil, andfive hundred dollars banana currency, and had left the fivehundred dollars with me as security, while he took the pin totown to a Chinese jeweler to have the diamond examined.My soldier brought back my pin and said he didn’t want it,and that he wanted his five hundred dollars back. I said Icouldn’t give it to him as I had already spent one hundreddollars for a bottle of oil. He said, “Never mind, keep themoney!” I said I didn’t want the money, I wanted food!And I asked him to make me an offer for the pin.

  Making this offer required three days of conversationthrough the barbed wire, and many visits to my barrack.Meanwhile I insisted that the guard keep the pin, knowinghe would be more tempted to close with me for it aftershowing it to his friends. In due time, but without much en-thusiasm, he brought the forty eggs and one botde of oil;he did this, he said, because he was sorry for me. I gave himback his four hundred dollars.

  The extra food which came into the women’s camp in thisway, during the period of least rations, was probably onereason why the
women remained in better health than themen. All the camps smuggled, but the women’s camp wasfurthest from headquarters, and our guards were in less dangerof discovery. But the principal reason that we were successfulwith contraband was that the Japanese officers ignored ouractivity as long as we did not face them with it. If we wereclumsy and they caught us, then to save their faces they weresevere. But in the men’s camp smugglers were fiercely soughtafter, and brutally punished.

  In time the officers acquired most of these possessions whichwe traded over the fence for contraband.

  Sometimes I enjoyed it thoroughly: my mind had nothingelse to work on but outwitting the Japs, and getting meals.Other times, when I almost got caught, when consequences

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  stared at me, I was scared to death, and thought longingly ofthe time when I could live under the law again, and not fightit for food.

  We had been ordered to clear and weed the tapioca acres,a swampy plantation near the camp, about fifteen minutes’walk away. The tapioca root was ready for harvest, much of itwas rotting in the ground, and we were hungry and withoutfood. Yet we were not told to harvest the tapioca, but to clearit, and leave it in the ground. There were now eighty secularwomen in camp. Of this number, only thirty-eight werewell enough to do physical work.

  We were ordered to send out a working party of thirtywomen daily. This left eight able-bodied women in camp todo the community cooking, cleaning, and so on. Workinghours in the field were nine to twelve, and three to six. Wetook turns going out on the working party, and on my day ofrest I stayed at home and did camp work.

  As the Sisters had also to send out a working party, theydiscontinued the children’s lessons. But as the mothers werethe youngest and fittest group in camp, and best able to dooutside work, it was necessary for us to go. We asked theJapanese what to do with our children. They said, “Takethem with you.”

  We did. The rain came daily, the sun steamed us daily. Theplantation was swampy; there were mosquitoes, bugs, centi-pedes, snakes — and a stream to fall in. The children loved it,but the mothers didn’t.

  So we left them in camp, to run wild. At night when wecame home to them, filthy dirty ourselves and dead-tired, wealways found them in trouble: swimming in the bath tank,wading in the well, fishing in the drinking water, stealing po-tatoes from the Sisters’ garden, pinching somebody’s firewood,throwing stones, cutting each other up with knives, or maybejust getting mud all over our own four by six feet of living

  space. Did our kids have any rights in this world, we asked.No, they didn’t.

  Then the Allied planes started bombing Kuching. To leaveour children in camp uncared-for, then, was torture. TheSisters came to the rescue again: they rearranged their workprogram so that two teaching Sisters could resume teaching,and when air raids came they saw the children safely in thetrenches, which had been dug for them some weeks before bythe Dutch Roman Cathohc Fathers.

  After two weeks of working in the tapioca swamp the num-ber of ulcers in camp trebled, the sick roll doubled, and feverbecame very prevalent. It seemed impossible to fill our quotaof workers, but like all other impossible things in camp life,we did it.

  Tapioca root grows like a tuber under the soil, and is calledin Malay ubi kayu, Hterally “wood potato,” which is a verygood description of it. The root is pure starch and water, andwhen old it becomes so fibrous that it splinters when youbreak it, and is inedible. But when young it is delicious roastedor boiled, or seems so to starving people. It tastes a little likewhite potato, but never becomes floury when cooked, justbecomes more and more glutinous. The skin is poisonous, andit should be peeled off very deep, and, with or without skin,eating much tapioca root produces acute indigestion.

  The roots grow from six inches to two feet below the sur-face of the soil, and above them flourishes a thin-stemmed,green, dusterlike tree which grows to be six to eight feet riill,

  If we had been sent out to harvest the tapioca root we cotildhave put heart in it, but to be told to clear and weed the land,while the tapioca went to rot, was annoying.

  However, not all of the tapioca went to rot; we ate fran-tically all the time we were working. We dug it up with ourhands, digging madly with bare finger tips, extracting theroot, pushing mud back in the hole, huddling secretivelydown, and eating hungrily. We ate it raw. It was said to be

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  poisonous, it was manured with excrement, we were forbid-den to dig it; but we were hungry, and we ate it.

  We became bolder, and started hiding it on our persons andsmuggling it home. The roots were edible when from two totwelve inches long. I wore a man’s shirt and khaki shorts, andfilled my pockets, stuffed my shirt front, and held some upunder my armpits. I enlarged the pockets of my shorts to ac-commodate the larger roots. Some tried carrying it in bagsand coats, but these were always inspected, whereas ourbodies were seldom searched. Safely back in camp, we roastedand boiled the roots for the children, for ourselves, for friends.Having something to give was the one joy of that job.

  The guards knew that we were eating in the field; theygrumbled at us, but did nothing. They, like ourselves, weretired of war, fed-up, lethargic, they hated the tapioca job too,they said. They said to us, “Well, if you can eat raw tapiocaroot you miist be hungry! ”

  One day the guard warned us not to take any home. Hesaid that the officers were angry with us because we were notworking hard, and they guessed that we were stealing thetapioca. He thought there would be a search. I contented my-self with eating in the fields, that day. However, many peoplestuffed their bosoms anyway; hunger is a great incentive, andwe were used to false alarms.

  At noon we were mustered on the road to go home. Theladies bulged, and the Sisters billowed. Instead of beingmarched off home, we were ordered to remain at attentionon the road. Then approaching us we saw Miss Asaka, thefemale interpreter, and a Japanese officer.

  Instantly we knew. Tapioca hurled through the air like pro-jectiles. Without hesitation the ladies unbosomed themselvesfrom every fold, throwing the swag as far from them as theycould. The air was literaUy thick with it; it was anything morder to get rid of the evidence. At one moment the ladies

  bulged^ with tapioca, the next moment the roadside was bttriedunder it. We ladies had no modesty, no shame.

  But not so the Sisters; their swag was too well secreted.Modesty made them hesitate to expose undergarments, limbs.

  and person; the indignity of exposing their contraband in itsintimate locations made them hesitate, and hesitating theywere lost.

  Arrive Asaka and officer. Scene: landscape covered withtapioca root; ladies mostly not; Sisters guilty, shamed, andtrembling. Asaka starts the search, pinching, patting, prodding.

  looking, opening, exposing. No sense of shame, or modestyfor sex, restrained her; she knew how to search.

  Some of the ladies still had tapioca; these ladies’ names shetook. As she searched there was a monologue from Asaka:“Shame! For shame! To steal! You white ladies! Shame!Shame!”

  Then came the Sisters. What a sad expose! Out of pants,bloomers, blouses, aprons, shirts, singlets, stockings, sleeves,came tapioca. Caught with the goods, there wasn’t much tosay. Asaka searched, and clucked, and “shamed.”

  The Sisters were not used to being rebuked for naughti-ness, as were we ladies, and they took the scolding seriously.The Nips had always thought better of the Sisters than theydid of the rest of us.

  The Sisters wept. We ladies only said. Too bad, no moretapioca now!

  That afternoon word came from the office for the guiltyones to appear. I had not been caught with tapioca, bufi wasordered up. If the Japanese once learned your name they wenton using it for every occasion.

  We went. Lieutenant Nekata gave the lecture: he said thatto steal was a great shame on us white people, who talked somuch about being honorable. He said we should know betterand have higher principles. He then asked, “Why did youdo it?”

  Each one answered t
he same; “We are hungry.”

  He said, “If you are hungry you should ask, not steal.”

  We said, “We do ask, and you do not give.”

  He said, “Ah, ah, ah, we are aU hungry in Kuching becauseAllies stop ships from bringing rice to Borneo. This is theAllies’ fault. We Japanese are hungry too.”

  We looked at him and at the guards, and then we lookedat ourselves, and mentally compared our bulk and flesh.

  “May we then in future take tapioca home from the fieldswhen we work?” we asked him.

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  Not now,” he said, “because you have been naughty! Ifyou steal again I wiU punish you severely, but I will notpunish you this time. Go home now, and be good.”

  So we went home, but were not good.

  In May 1945, we were given one postcard each, and toldwe might send it home. We were to write twenty-five words,not including the address. Xhis happened three times a year,but this time there was something new. In addition to thementy-five words, a certain percentage of the camp miistinclude a propaganda sentence, this to be chosen from a num-ber of sentences submitted to us.

  A few of these sentences follow:

  Borneo is a land of milk and honey and plenty, with fruit,glorious moonlight nights, happy days, and contentment, hereamong the wonderful Nipponese.

  We appreciate the kindness and bounty of the Nipponesetreatment.

  We have learned to admire many traits of the Orient sincebeing interned by the Nipponese, who are gentle, and kind, andgenerous to us.

  We are allowed to smoke, sing, hum, whistle, play games,and we would be very happy if only you were here, darling[I wanted to add, “But we do not eat.”]

  These kind and happy people have done so much for us. Dearones, it is a privilege for us to be with them. But we wish thatour aggressor nation would sue for peace now. . . .