Three Came Home

VOLUME 177

NUMBER 2

FEBRUARY, 1946

89th YEAR OF CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION

by AGNES NEWTON KEITH

IN 1937 the first manuscript of Agnes Newton Keith walked into the Atlantic office. It came from Sandakan, North Borneo, and it proved to be the enchanting story of Saudin, the Keiths’ houseboy, who had been lent to the Martin Johnsons to care for the wild animals they were bringing back to the States. Saudin lived for several months in New York City, and on his return he told his mistress what he thought of the life in her home country.

When we accepted Saudin’s story, we encouraged Mrs. Keith to tell us of her life as the wife of an official of the British Government in North Borneo. This she eventually did in her prize-winning autobiography, Land Below the Wind. That book was published in the late summer of 1939, and Mr. and Mrs. Keith were in the United States at the time, on their first leave in five years. But their vacation was exit short by the outbreak of war.

The Keiths had no illusions of an easy victory, and in her article “Before Invasion,” which Mrs. Keith sent to the Editor several months before Pearl Harbor, she foretold the coming of the Japanese and said that she and her husband might take refuge with the wild tribes in the interior of Borneo; but she admitted that such an escape was complicated by the presence of young George, their two-year-old son. Would there be enough quinine to protect them?

When the Japanese landed after the fall of Singapore, the Keiths stuck to their posts and with their child were taken into captivity. They were prisoners for three and a half years. Not until Christmas of 1945 could they again taste freedom and American food, Mrs. Keith after a short rest is now beginning to write the story of what forty white women, of whom she was one, did to protect their lives and their children during those inescapable months.

TODAY, from the safety of the North American continent, I look back over three and a half years spent in Japanese prison camps in Borneo. They were hard years, and there isn’t much that is good to be said about them. I do not believe that they improved my character, and I know they didn’t improve my disposition. The doctor doesn’t seem to think they improved my constitution, and the mirror assures me that they didn’t improve my face.

When I was still in captivity, I believed that my character had changed. I felt that I was hard, cold, tough, unable to be hurt myself, and ready to hurt others without a qualm. But now that I am free I see that I am, as George would say, just an old softie again.

I hope that such hard manual tasks as I learned to perform under Japanese surveillance will, from now on, have no place in my life. If the Nipponese ever had any suitable implements with which to accomplish any work, they never gave us those implements. Bare hands were their choice. People say there is great joy in working with your hands. If so, we led a joyful life.

I also hope that the occasions in my future life to smuggle and beg for food — accomplishments I perfected in Japanese prison camps — will be limited.

Those three and a half years in prison camps equipped me well for just one thing — more prison. But before I go to prison again, I will die.

For captivity taught me the value of freedom. In all my life before, I had existed as a free woman, and I hadn’t known it.

Now freedom means this to me. The right to live with, to touch, and to love my husband and children. The right to look about me without fear of seeing people struck and beaten. The capacity to work for myself and our children.

The possession of a door, and a key with which to lock it. Moments of silence. A place in which to weep, with no one to see me doing so.

Copyright 1946, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

The freedom of my eyes to scan the face of the earth, the mountains, trees, the fields, the sea, without barbed wire across my vision. The strength to walk with the wind in my face, and no sentry to stop me. The ability to look at the new moon without seeing it as the symbol of passing time. Without asking, “How many more times must it rise on my captivity?”

I think that these things make freedom. I will never give it up again.

2

THE darkest hours of all my life were the last fortyeight before the Japanese Army occupied Sandakan, British North Borneo, on January 19, 1942.

My husband had been employed for many years as a civil servant in the British North Borneo Government. He was as much under orders in Borneo as were the armed forces elsewhere. The only weapons of defense with us were a policy of denial and passive resistance. My husband’s orders were to remain at his post until the Japanese occupying forces arrived, Just remain there, that was all.

They came in on Monday. On Saturday we had learned that they were on their way by launches from Jesselton, on the west coast of British North Borneo. Jesselton had been under their rule for some weeks.

There were about forty women and children remaining in Sandakan. On Sunday it was agreed that these were to assemble at three different residences in town, so that the women would not be alone in their homes when the Japanese soldiers arrived. Our husbands had, of course, to be at their posts.

All day Sunday the rain poured down on us. At six o’clock in the evening, as had been arranged, I took George, our two-year-old son, and left for Government House. I told Harry good-bye in our home. He said, “We will never do this again.”

I said, “At least we might have been together!”

At Government House that night the other women and I sat and talked about things that meant nothing to us. Then we went to bed. After eight or more hours of lying in bed wondering what was going to happen to us, we got up again. We were gray in the face that morning.

It was seven o’clock. The Japanese were landing, and the Resident was at the wharf waiting for them. We heard a shot. We thought it was the Resident being shot by the Japanese. It turned out to be a European who had committed suicide.

The Japanese arrived at Government House in a few minutes. They were shock troops: they needn’t have been — there was nothing very tough about us.

From then until September 11, 1945, we lived in captivity. Many violent things happened. But in all my life there is nothing for sheer mental terror to equal those hours of waiting before the Nipponese came in.

It is natural to wonder why I was foolish enough to stay in the Eastern war zone as late as the day on which the Japanese Army occupied Sandakan, especially when I was accompanied by a two-year-old son. It was not foolhardiness and stupidity alone which held me in Borneo, but the combination of a husband, a job, and a sense of fate.

I also in 1941-1942 was doing war work. I had been asked to accept an emergency job in order to assist in relieving Allied manpower for more important work. It did not fit in with my personal desires to do so. I had writing which I was most anxious to do.

In 1939 I had been fortunate in publishing a bestselling book about Borneo. I was anxious to follow this with a novel about Borneo. The birth of George in 1940 had already delayed progress on my book. By 1941 I was itching to get to my work again.

But there was a war on. The Civil Service was short of men, and those in responsible offices were overworked and overtired. I saw my husband and others working until midnight on emergency jobs, and then worrying from midnight on. I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. So I did war work instead of writing a book.

Throughout twelve months of the year 1941 both civilians and Government argued hotly the question of whether or not women and children should be forcibly evacuated from British North Borneo. I always hoped that we should not be ordered to leave. We were not.

I believe now that the women and children should have been forcibly evacuated. The decision should not have been left to the individual. In wartime the individual is not in a position to know military or defense facts. Those who know these facts should take the responsibility of deciding who is to stay in the war zone. It is evading responsibility to refuse such a decision.

But in my own case I accept full responsibility for having stayed. I was under no delusion about the security of our location. I did not need anybody to tell me that the war was coming to the East, or that the Nipponese were coming to Borneo. The Japanese themselves had been writing pamphlets for us in English (The Bulletin of the South Seas) and sending them to us for the last six years, mentioning just those facts. I guess I was the only one in Borneo who read them. But what I did not know, or even dream of, was that the Japanese would remain in Borneo for three and two-thirds years.

A few weeks before the victorious arrival of the Nipponese, the women remaining on Sandakan were offered a final chance to leave, on their own responsibility. A small coastal steamer, the Baynain, was being sent to the Dutch East Indies in order to keep it out of the hands of the Nipponese, and it was evacuating a few local women.

That was the last ship out of our port. My war work gave me a good reason for stating then that I intended to stay with my husband and see things through. I know that I should have been released from my work if I had asked to be. I did not ask.

We knew the responsibility that we were taking in keeping George with us. But my husband and I had made up our minds that we would all three stay together. Our flesh and blood were one, our loves were one, our life — and it need be our death-should be together.

I believed and said all through our captivity that if George came through alive and with no permanent injury to his health, that it Harry and I came out alive and with a possibility of regaining health, then I should have been right in staying. If we did not, then I was wrong in staying. It was a question to be answered only by test.

We are at home now, alive, well.

This does not mean that I would do it again.

Today, knowing what I do, I say that no Heaven On Earth in the future could be worth the ordeal of going through those years again, knowingly — knowing as I do now the utter desolation that was to face me as day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, my captivity continued; knowing the virtual dissolution of body and soul which certain conditions of living, even more than of dying, bring. My husband and I both agree that we could not do it again, knowing what was before us. We do not regret the decision to stay together. But another time there would be for us one final escape.

Now that I am back with free persons again, I feel a wide gap between myself and them. It is an emotional gap. It is not only the things I have seen, but the thoughts I have thought. The remedy is not vitamin pills or sleeping pills. I cannot cross the gap yet. I do not know if I ever shall.

I lost much in those captive years, but I gained one thing by staying: if my husband had remained in Borneo, if I had come home before the war, that gap would be between us now. Today at least we are both on the same side.

3

WHEN the Japanese first arrived in Sandakan and discovered the lack of supplies on hand they were indignant. It seems that they had expected us to save our oil, petrol, scrap iron, motors, launches, and high-octane gasoline to trade with them, in exchange for our lives. The spirit we had shown in destroying these things was not a friendly one.

So they interned all the men in the second-class ward of the Civil Hospital while they decided whom they would shoot. Coming to no agreement about this, they decided instead to ask certain of the men to come out and work with them.

One of the essential needs of the country was to produce more food. My husband, as Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture, was considered necessary to this end. Under the orders of the Governor of North Borneo he agreed to be released from internment, and to attempt to work with the Japanese, for the purpose of food production only.

This he did for four months. During this time we moved back to our home, and continued to live there surrounded by what personal possessions the Japanese soldiers did not require for the prosecution of the war. Colored shirts, fountain pens, fancy penknives, attractive pillows and drapes, silk stockings, sweaters, and other similar armaments were confiscated for the Nipponese war effort.

On May 12, with half an hour’s notice and one suitcase each, we and all other European men, women, and children in Sandakan were taken to Berhala, a small island at the mouth of Sandakan Bay, and interned. The Government quarantine station and the leper station were situated there. We were placed in the old quarantine buildings on one side of the hill, and the lepers were on the other. Being as ignorant as most people are about leprosy, we expected to find spots on ourselves at any moment.

Here on Berhala the sanitary equipment in the women’s camp consisted of two ordinary buckets for use as toilets. These we emptied daily into the sea.

There were sixteen children interned on Berhala Island, all under three years old. In time they all developed enteritis and mild dysentery from bad food and filthy living conditions. In time, to our astonishment, they all recovered, to live and grow on cucumbers and stinking fish.

When first interned on Berhala Island we thought the Japanese rations were almost uneatable. These consisted of rotting fish, greens, occasional bananas, rancid oil, and rice. The food tasted unpleasant to us, the change from meat and vegetables to a rice diet made many of us ill, and there was much beri-beri, a disease of malnutrition. It was not a healthful diet, but at least there was enough to fill our stomachs. Two and a half years later, in January, 1945, to have had enough of anything to eat would have been luxury to us.

One thing made life on Berhala Island bearable for me. The men and women lived in separate compounds with sentries between the buildings, and no official contact was permitted between men and women. But every few nights Harry and I would crawl under our fences and through the barbed wire and creep through the long grass to meet in the dark. Here, lying together under a coconut palm, Harry would assure me that we would be free again within three months. It was always three months. That was the furthest date that our hopes could embrace in those days. I do not know if we really believed it, or if we just did not dare to believe anything else.

After eight months on Berhala Island, George and I, with forty-five other women and children, were moved to Kuching, Sarawak, also in Borneo. The men were not moved. Here we joined women and children from other parts of Borneo.

We were nine days on the way, and the first two days we had no food. We were loaded onto the deck of a small steamer which had neither lifeboats nor iife belts. The one cabin was occupied by Japanese officers, with Japanese female companions who had the ugliest legs I have ever seen detached from pianos.

We did not have sufficient space on deck to lie down, so the mothers sat up and held their children. As it rained most of the time, the decks were constantly awash from rain or from babies, and we and the bedding and the luggage were never dry. Upon arrival in Kuching the children all developed influenza. But once again, in direct defiance of fate, they all recovered.

A Japanese soldier who was traveling on the boat told me that he had read Land Below the Wind in Japanese, that he liked the book, and that he was sorry for us and our children. I asked him to ask the Japanese authorities at the next port to give us fruit for our children. He did so. The authorities refused. The soldier then secretly gave me ten dollars to buy food for George, but asked me not to tell anyone. I bought food and maintained secrecy. That was the first money I possessed in internment, as the Japanese had taken our cash away from us when they imprisoned us, and it was a serious offense to be caught with money.

Two months later, in March, 1943, the men also were moved from Berhala Island to Kuching, where they were placed in a separate camp. Here we were allowed to meet our husbands occasionally, at first every three or four months. We met in the presence of armed guards, usually for a half hour at a time. We were not allowed to kiss or touch each other, or to exchange any articles.

If we met by accident at any other time we were not allowed to speak or to look at each other. Our first women’s camp in Kuching was in view of the men’s camp. Every evening after work the women would walk back and forth across their barbed-wire enclosure in order to see their husbands in the distance. The Japanese commanded us not to do so — they said it annoyed them. But temptation was too great. So the Japanese moved the women’s camp a half mile farther down the road, out of view of husbands. Here we remained until the end of the war.

4

KUCHING, in the onetime White Rajah’s Kingdom of Sarawak, was the headquarters in Borneo for all Allied prisoners of war and internees. The city is twenty-two miles up the river from the sea, and our camps were located three miles beyond it. The settlement was known as Batu Lintang Camp, and it was composed of eight separate camps.

Each camp was as completely segregated from the others as the Nipponese could make it. But, armed guards, barbed wire, rules, and punishments to the contrary, they could not stop secret contact between camps. Sometimes there were very few Nipponese soldiers under arms in Kuching, and there is no doubt that the Nipponese feared trouble from our camps if, incited by mistreatment, we should all get together.

Sometimes various hotheads tried to incite rebellion among the men, but we knew that it could only end in murder for all of us. In the beginning the Nipponese had come as victors into Borneo because they controlled the air and the sea. Until they lost control of the air and the sea they would stay there. Any hostile move we prisoners in Borneo made would only be suicide.

The aggregate population of these eight camps, prisoners of war and internees, was 2000 persons at the time of our liberation. At one time there were as many as 3000, but death and labor parties reduced the number. The divisions and personnel of the eight camps were as follows: Australian officers and NCO’s, British officers, Dutch officers, British soldiers, Indonesians, civilian men, Roman Catholic priests, and women and children.

At the time of liberation the sick rate in the combined camps was about 75 per cent. The British soldiers’ camp was the worst-treated of the group. The sick rate there was 90 per cent and the death rate was 50 per cent.

Our women’s camp was the most healthful and the best-treated. All we had to complain of was semistarvation, weakness, occasional blows, and hard work on five tablespoons of rice. Our death rate was not spectacular. Being women, we hoarded our strength, eked out that one kilogram of energy, and lingered on. We could probably have lain flat on our backs and just continued to exist for some time. But we mothers did not spend much time on the flat of our backs.

I use the terms “prisoner” and “prison camp” instead of “internees” and “internment ” because the Nipponese conducted all camps in Kuching, including the civilian ones, under the prisoner-of-war rules. At irregular intervals, usually after some one of us had been naughty and laughed at one of our captors at the wrong time, or had otherwise insulted the Emperor, who was practically a living Presence with us, the Rules-for-Conduct-of-Prisoners-of-War was passed out to us again to read. There were five typewritten pages, and we were subject to execution in practically every paragraph. Life became so hazardous on page one that we seldom got any farther. We never believed that the Nipponese would execute a woman — when it was so easy to starve us to death. In any case, if one is always hungry, weary, miserable, and discouraged, the idea of execution is just one more thing.

When we first realized that we were prisoners, and our camp a prison, instead of internees with civilian rights, we thought we would point this out to the Nipponese. We mentioned international law. The matter was discussed very delicately with Colonel Suga, our Japanese Commander, who was a graduate of the University of Washington in the United States. Colonel Suga agreed with us that there was such a thing as international law. He was it.

Later research on the subject of international law developed the addenda that the man with the gun is the one complete authority on the subject. The verdict is a bang on the head or a kick in the kidneys for the man without the gun. If the plaintiff protests the verdict, the following decision is handed down by the Japanese authorities: —

“Mr. Blank has been convicted of conspiracy. We very much sorry because we trusted Mr. Blank, and are kind to him because Nipponese always kind, and because Nipponese wish prisoners to be happy, although all prisoners great cowards to be taken prisoner. Allied soldiers are not like brave Nipponese, who always die fighting or else happy to kill selves.

“But Mr. Blank not nice to Nipponese guard, and make Nipponese guard kick him. This make guard unhappy, and thereby undermine Nipponese Army Morale, which is conspiracy. Conspiracy very serious.

“Therefore we sentence Mr. Blank to three weeks in the cells, because we are too kind to execute him as he deserve. Three weeks in cell not very long time, and sometimes people come out alive with scarce mutilations and only slightly destroyed by patriotic indignation of guards. Mr. Blank should be very happy that punishment so tender.

“We not understand why Mr. Blank show prejudice against Nipponese.”

The legal side of the case in international law now ends, and the zealous patriotism of the guard takes over.

5

I HAVE been told that my family gave us up as dead. No word had been received from us at home throughout the first two years of the war. Even aside from the probability of death by violence, they did not believe that either my physical strength or that of our two-year-old child could endure. My mother died in 1943 without having learned that we were still alive.

But the human body survives much. My child’s life depended upon me. His only chance for future health was in my hands. I had kept him out there; I must carry him through.

In the women’s camp in Kuching there were 289 people. We were divided into three groups: 120 Dutch Roman Catholic Sisters, 40 English Roman Catholic Sisters, and 120 lay females and children. There were four barracks in camp. Three of these were used for housing space, and one was reserved for religious services.

As we were painfully overcrowded, we had asked the Nipponese to allow us to use all four barracks for living quarters, but they steadfastly refused. I do not know why, unless it was in order to say that they had provided us with a chapel and had not interfered with our religious pursuits.

Each individual in our camp had a floor space approximately five feet by four feet, in which to sleep, eat, live, or die. There were no partitions. There was no privacy, no quiet. The mothers and children all lived together in one end of one barrack.

The mothers were much criticized. People said that we should not have been there at all. But I decided while living in prison camp that that statement holds true of all humanity — it just shouldn’t be here at all. By its elimination we would cure all evils, including wars and prison camps.

The women without children were accustomed to say to the mothers, “I don’t see how you stand it! It must be Hell being a mother in this camp!”

It was Hell, but it was Heaven too. In that wallow of captivity known as Kuching Internment Camp there were just thirty-four good reasons for staying alive, and those were our thirty-four children. We brought them all through.

One of those babies was born in internment, and one came into prison camp when she was only two months old. Three were under six months of age and still nursing when they and their mothers were imprisoned. A number of them, I think seven, were the same age as George, two years old when imprisoned. The eldest child entered camp when she was seven.

There were twenty-four of us mothers. We worked, hated, fought, shouted, laughed, and wept together, and we always stuck together. Life was grim. We lived not much above the level of animals — animals who feed, fight for, and love their young.

Our barrack was regarded by nonresidents as a dirty hole, a stink hole, a pest hole, a Hell hole. It was Hades let loose on a rainy day. It was the final crash of a brass band throughout feeding hours. It smelled of kids, pots, and wee-wee. The noise started at six in the morning and continued until six the next morning.

But there was one hour after supper at night when the type of noise changed. The children were all in bed then; the mothers were also, being too exhausted for anything else. Then took place that sudden transformation to which children are subject when the dusk falls: thirty-four little devils become thirtyfour little angels. They smell good, they speak sweetly, they squeeze your hand, they even want to kiss you — and they sing! Tragedy came and went in our camp, but we never missed a night to sing — “Kiss Me Good Night, Sergeant Major,” “Good Night, Daddy and Jim,” “Christopher Robin Is Saying His Prayers,” “I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old,” “One Finger, One Thumb, One Arm, One Leg,” “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” And always, without fail, we ended up with “God Save Our Gracious King, God Save the King.”

I can never forget the sound of those children’s voices, singing, with nothing to sing for. If their song could have been broadcast to the outside world I think that hearts would have broken. I have stood listening outside our barrack at night and have wept from pride and love and sorrow.

They were mischievous, naughty, profane. They learned deceit. They smuggled, and sometimes I fear they stole, but never from each other. They fought and they kicked; they were tough — they had to be.

They learned that hunger was the natural condition of life. They learned that a meal was a big event, eggs were better than gold, a piece of rotting fish was luxury, a banana was a treasure. And that all these articles were contraband, and only to be spoken of in whispers.

They learned that everything must be hidden from the Nips. When soldiers searched the premises, eggs went under the house, oil went to the latrines, sugar went into the drain.

They learned to bow politely to Japanese officers; what they did behind their backs I shall ignore.

They learned to be generous, sharing everything. They were helpful, even taking on jobs beyond their strength. They were sympathetic; their faces of sorrow when they saw us in trouble were almost unbearable. They were cheerful, resourceful, brave. And they did not complain.

I said that we brought them all through alive. But perhaps they brought us through alive.

Throughout the year 1944 every change in camp was for the worse. Rules increased, food decreased; work increased, strength decreased. Disappointments multiplied, and optimism was never verified. Hope itself seemed only a refuge for those who would not face facts.

During the last eight months of the war our daily food ration per person as supplied by the Japanese was as follows: one cupful of thin rice gruel, four and a half tablespoons of cooked rice, a little salt, a little sugar, and tea. This was what the Japanese expected us to live on. Or did they expect us to live on it?

Additions to this diet were sweet potato tops which we grew ourselves. Every square foot of the camp was in use for gardens, but the soil was exhausted and we were exhausted. The last six months of imprisonment we were so undernourished that it was almost impossible for us to do active and heavy work. We arose before sunrise to finish our work inside the camp, and then we had to go outside the camp to work for the Japanese. By nine o’clock in the morning we were worn out. Day after day we asked ourselves and each other, “How much longer can we go on?”

The only thing that kept us going during this period was illegal traffic. By spells we were able to smuggle dried fish, coconut oil, and eggs into camp via the Japanese guards.

As the Allied forces neared Borneo, Japanese currency, known as banana money, decreased in value. The guards became anxious to acquire our gold, jewelry, and diamonds, materials 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 camp to sell food to them for cash, and would then deliver the food to us in exchange for our valuables. Or else they would trade the goods to the Chinese for the food, the guard keeping part of the goods as commission.

The extra food which came into the women’s camp in this way was probably one reason why the women remained in better health than the men. All camps did smuggling, but the women’s camp was farthest removed from headquarters, and our guards were in less danger of discovery than those in the other camps. But the principal reason the women were successful with contraband was that the Japanese officers themselves ignored our activity, as long as we did not face them with it. In the men’s camp, smugglers were sought after and severely punished.

6

ON March 25, 1945, some American Flying Fortresses appeared over Kuching camp.

That was the first sign of the Allies that we had ever had. We were wild with joy. Optimism came to life again, as treacherous and abortive as ever. Any hour, any day, any week now, we felt, would bring us release.

So the planes came, and came, and came. They bombed daily. They sported overhead. They flew low and ticked our chimney tops; they rustled the leaves off trees. The Nips didn’t dare touch them. Our planes they were, daring, magnificent, beautiful, glorious, free. They represented life and health and food and strength—or at worst the quick, clean death of a hero.

But month followed month, without release. We plodded and dug in the earth below. We lived with worms and we thought like worms, and when we were hungry we ate worms, and worms multiplied and lived inside us. We ceased looking up. We ceased expecting release. We ceased expecting at all. We just existed.

I knew that victory would come. I never ceased to know that. But I lost hope that I should see it. In fact, I lost all concern about it. It was just another war: it would be just another peace — just another false pledge for the future. But I should not be there to know it.

And then came August 15, 1945.

I wonder if the world outside visioned the Allied prisoners of war in Japanese prison camps all over the Orient as being miraculously set free at sound of the word Armistice? Perhaps they visioned us as going mad with joy on that day. If so, they were wrong. We in Kuching went mad with rumors which we were afraid to believe, but not with joy. We had been disappointed too often. For us in Kuching the most nerve-destroying period of the war set in after peace had come to the world outside. We then came nearest to losing our lives.

There had been no fighting in Sarawak since December, 1941. From that date until the Armistice the Japanese forces there had been content to march in the sunlight and sing war songs in the moonlight. Then came the atomic bomb and the entry of Russia into the war against Japan. The Emperor of Japan asked for peace on behalf of the Japanese nation and ordered all Japanese forces to surrender.

The Kuching forces refused to surrender. After three and a half years of quiet, they decided to begin their own war. The Son of Heaven had ordered them to surrender, and as Japanese subjects they must do so. Therefore they would cease to be Japanese subjects, forswear their nationality, renounce their Emperor, and have a good fight instead.

A few days after the Armistice the Japanese trebled our food rations. We began then to believe that peace might have come to the outside world.

But we were prisoners in Borneo still. We were the victors, but the losing side still had the guns. A mass massacre by Nipponese soldiers, if rescue did not come soon, began to be rumored. But a mass massacre if rescue came with violence was also rumored.

There were twenty-seven days of uncertainty. During this time the threat of a forced march was also held over us. Considering the conditions of illhealth which existed in the camps, and the probable conditions of a forced march, this would have ended in death for most of us.

At the same time pamphlets were being dropped to us by the Australians, telling us that “peace with victory” had come to the Allies, and that they would release and care for us as soon as possible. The Nipponese forbade us “on pain of death” to collect or read any pamphlets dropped by planes. But death held no pain equal to the joy of reading those pamphlets.

On August 30, food and Red Cross drugs were dropped to us by parachute from Douglas C-47 planes. The first parachute brought bread. And that was the article of food for which we had longed more than any other.

We were delirious that day with joy, but it was not the thought of a square meal which made us laugh and cry. It was the thought that anybody should do anything for us again — that was more than we could bear without hysteria.

And every day thereafter, until the Australians were ready to come in and release us, the C-47’s dropped manna from Heaven.

7

No C-47’s came at eleven o’clock on September 11 to drop food for us; no C-47’s dashed thrillingly by at arm’s length.

Instead the planes overhead were high, remote, and austere. They were in the air over Kuching and its vicinity for several hours. This dignified conduct on their part suggested to us that activity was at last taking place on the river.

At four o’clock that afternoon we were told by our camp master, Dorie Adams, that the Australian occupying forces had come up the river and landed at Kuching. They were on the way to us now, and would take surrender of the camps as soon as they arrived. There would be no preliminary warning. If we wished to see them take over we must be ready to leave for the square at a minute’s notice.

I warned George then to stay close at hand, but I still would not let myself believe that the day had come. Not until I had laid eyes on those Australians. Most of us felt the same way. Long disappointment had taught us.

At five o’clock the call came: “Go to the square. Australians take over in three minutes.”

For one minute then I stood quite still. I knew in my bones that this time it was true. With all of my being I gave thanks to God. It was all over.

Then the camp became madder than ever. Most of the women tore off their patched old clothes and hurried into the one decent dress which they had been saving for years, for this day.

I looked all about me for George. No George. All over camp I ran. Still no George. “All right, George, you little so-and-so,” I thought, “I’m not going to wait for you this time. You can just stay behind.”

I give one final shout of “George!” and somebody shouts back that George has already gone up the road with some of the children. I am late. I run towards the camp entrance and start up the road.

“Mum!” George’s small voice calls faintly from far behind me in camp.

I stop. George is covering the ground after me as fast as possible. “Hurry, hurry, or we’ll miss the soldiers.”

“Mum, my belt’s broken and my pants are falling off.” Whereupon his pants fall off. George arrives with tongue out and pants in hand. On go the pants, on goes the belt.

“Now hurry!”

Up the road we race. The road to captivity, and now the road to freedom. Here to the left of us is the hospital ward, filled with men too far gone from starvation edema ever to recover. Here is the morgue, a small room fifteen feet by nine feet. During the dysentery epidemic the bodies of men were piled in here like fish in tins. Here is the clinic. Here men begged for, but didn’t receive, medicine from the Japanese doctor. Here one bowed low in passing, Jap doctor in sight or not. We found that the best way to populate a Japanese landscape with officials was to omit a bow. If one bowed regularly the landscape remained empty; if one omitted to bow, the scene was instantly crowded with insulted Japanese officials.

Here is the sentry box. Here one bows to the Nipponese guard, or used to. There is no guard there today. Here one used to wait in the sun while the guard mumbled and muttered and decided how unpleasant he could be. Here was the scene of endless tortures for the men.

Here on the right hand is the British soldiers’ camp. This is the camp of skeletons, which move laboriously, slowly, weakly. That they move at all is the wonder.

Here is the Dutch camp; beyond it is the civilian men’s camp; across from it is the priests’ camp. All camps are empty. Everyone who can walk, creep, totter, crawl, is on the road moving towards the square. And this is the same road down which we women have so many times in the past stumbled under the weight of heavy rubber trees to be used for firewood.

Now we are in the square. This was the place for public meetings when we as prisoners were harangued by the Japanese. Here Colonel Suga, our Japanese Commander, frequently addressed us.

His words were: “This is going to be a long war, ten years at least. The Nipponese are going to be victorious. Your Army and Navy are being defeated. The Nipponese never give up. I know you are homesick. I sympathize with you. I am very kind. You are prisoners. You must obey me.”

This square was the place for public punishments. Over here is the little green mound with the main sentry box. The sentry used to stand in the box under the tree in the shade. The victim, who probably did not know what he was being punished for, stood in the road in the sun. Perhaps he held a heavy weight at arm’s length above his head; perhaps he squatted; perhaps he knelt with his arms at right angles in front of him. When he fell over he was kicked until he got up, and when he could no longer get up he was just kicked.

Into this square we pour today.

8

As WE pass the gate of the civilian men’s camp Harry joins us. All three together, we push forward into the square, which seems already full with the 2000 prisoners. There is a small platform at the far side, with a Union Jack now flying above it.

I look about me for the Australians, for we have heard that 500 of them came in. But there are only a few to be seen, tall, straight-featured, strong young men. There are more American sailors visible than Australians. We learn later that most of the Australian solrliers are busy moving swiftly about the city of Kuching, trying to appear like 5000 men rather than 500. For the Nipponese still have 5000 soldiers under arms in the vicinity of Kuching.

Now Colonel Walsh, the highest-ranking officer among the Australian prisoners of war, steps onto the platform and calls the crowd to attention. He presents a huge, blue-eyed, red-cheeked Australian who is Brigadier General Eastick, RAA, of the Ninth Australian Army Division, in command of the landing force. He also presents Captain Jennings of the United States Navy, who has accompanied Eastick up the river. Captain Jennings is the perfect picture of what a captain in the Navy should be.

Brigadier General Eastick then speaks in a cheery, booming voice. “I feel deeply honored to be the one to bring relief to you today. I will read a message to you from Major General Wooten, who commands the Ninth Australian Army Division, which sets you free today.” He then reads: —

“‘We are sorry to have been so long in coming to you. Because of your position up the Kuching River and because of difficult fighting conditions in Borneo, we have been slow in getting here. We have not had the ships available to come in to you before, or to take you away. You have been patient for a long time. But today I greet you as a free people again.’ ”

“We expect to take you out of Kuching as quickly as possible,” Eastick explains. “The sick will be taken care of first. Some of these will be taken tomorrow to Labuan, the headquarters of the Ninth Australian Army Division in Borneo. The rest of you will be taken out day by day as shipping space becomes available. In Labuan you will be given medical and hospital care, rest, and every aid towards regaining your health, while you are waiting for transportation to your homes.

“We have brought with us three padres, Roman Catholic, Church of England, and Congregational, as we expect that you will wish to hold thanksgiving services tomorrow.”

While Brigadier General Eastick is speaking, we in the crowd come nearer to realizing that we are FREE. We are between tears and cheers. We strike each other’s backs and clasp hands. The children are held high in the air. But they are quiet now, for our tears astound and frighten them. Harry attempts to lift George to his shoulder, but Harry is still too weak from malaria and undernourishment. A friend lifts George up instead.

Then over this sea of hysteria Captain Jennings speaks. Here are his words: —

“Today is my first experience of this sort. It is worth many a battle, and many a long hard night on the sea. This is what we have been fighting for.”

It is the one perfect speech that I have ever heard, but it finishes composure for the day. Captain Jennings himself, they tell me, ended his words in tears. No one was ashamed of crying that day.

Everyone having had a good cry, the next thing was for the war correspondents and photographers to get busy and carry the drama to the outside world.

Eastick and Jennings were photographed shaking hands with everybody, we former prisoners were photographed with and without tears, the rescue forces were photographed, and the children were photographed eating the chocolates, lollipops, and chewing gum which every single soldier and sailor immediately pulled out of his pants’ pockets upon arrival at camp.

But the most dramatic picture of that day was never photographed.

Harry and I stood at one side of the crowd waiting for George to disentangle himself from a newsreel. The crowd still faced towards the platform. Skirting uncertainly along the edge of this crowd came a small, very small, very short, khaki-clad figure, his sword smacking his brief legs, his heels clicking, his little fatigue shirttails flipping. It was Colonel Suga, alone, ignored. He trotted all around the outskirts of the crowd. No one smiled or spoke or saluted. People didn’t fail to see him: he just didn’t exist any more for them.

A month before we must have stood to attention, saluted, bowed at a fifteen-degree angle, while all the Nipponese soldiers in sight would have shouted, grunted, banged their guns, and acted in Nipponese style.

Suga wove his way to the forefront of the crowd near Eastick and Jennings. Here he hesitated, stood and waited patiently, finally pressed apologetically forward, waited again, and in due time received a nod from them and then a careless word of dismissal. Then he turned and trotted back again in our direction.

I hoped he wouldn’t pass near us. I wanted to turn my back and not see him. For three and a half years I had had to be sorry for us, and now I didn’t want to be sorry for him. I didn’t want to speak to him: the favor of Colonel Suga was not to be sought after. I knew Harry would hate speaking to him. But I was sick of hatred in any form, either turned on me or on somebody else.

Suga came towards us, and as he drew near he looked straight at us. In spite of ourselves Harry and I both said, “Good evening, Colonel Suga.”

He stopped, took off his hat, and said, “Good evening. Have you met the American naval captain, Mrs. Keith?”

“Yes, thank you, Colonel Suga.”

“I hope that you and Mr. Keith are both well?”

“I am well, thank you. My husband is not.”

“Ah-ah. Very sorry. Good evening.”

He disappeared into the crowd, and again ceased to exist.

I said to Harry, “I didn’t think you’d want to speak to him.”

“I didn’t, but I felt sorry for him. He was so alone.”

We saw him just once more after that. The next day when the Union Jack was formally raised over Suga’s head office at the top of the hill, I watched him stand at salute while our colors went up. After that his sword was taken.

One day later he was flown to Labuan. Here he was to be questioned in regard to mistreatment of prisoners in Borneo. On September 17, the day after he arrived at Labuan, and the same day that we left Kuching prison camp for freedom, he cut his throat.

It was getting late and photographers, correspondents, generals and captains, rescuers and rescued, were exhausted. George and I said good-bye to Harry at the entrance to his camp. George was tired, and I lifted him to my back and we started down the road pick-a-back. We were all dragging along to our camps now, completely exhausted. We hadn’t the emotional strength even to he rescued.

The camp was quieter than usual — even the children’s barrack was quiet. We had supper and the children fell into bed. I wanted to make some notes about the day, but it was dark and I could no longer see.

I went across to the English Sisters’ barrack. There I found Mother Alban and said, “Could you possibly let me have a little piece of candle to write by?” Candles were priceless, but the Sisters always had them for Mass.

“It was a great day,” sighed Mother Albon, producing a bit of candle from under many petticoats. “A very great day. Now you must go home and write something wonderful about it.”

I went home and lit the candle, and sat down and tried to write. I wanted inspired words, but I couldn’t find them. I wanted some way of explaining to others what had happened to us that day. I wanted to tell them what it meant to be captive — and then to be free.

What it meant to be free! I saw in my mind the figure of Colonel Suga, who now didn’t matter.

I put down the pencil and blew out the candle without having written a word. I was tired in every part of me, mind, body, and soul. I lay down by George. His legs swarmed all over my side of the bed. I pushed and prodded my way in beside him. He turned over in his sleep and started grinding his teeth. Worms again, I thought.

I put my hand on his cheeks, which were cool; I felt his feet, which were warm; I touched his hair, which was soft. “There is nothing I can say as wonderful as George,” I thought, and went to sleep.