Agnes Newton Keith - Life in Borneo

Life in Borneo

Harry was Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for the government of North Borneo under the Chartered Company, and was also Honorary Curator of the Sandakan (State) Museum. He had worked in Borneo since 1925, and was based in Sandakan. Agnes spent an idyllic five years at Sandakan, sometimes accompanying her husband on trips into the interior of the country. Harry persuaded her to write about her experiences and enter it in the 1939 Atlantic Monthly Non-fiction Prize contest. The judges voted unanimously for her entry to win, and it was partly serialized in the magazine before being published in November of that year as Land Below the Wind. The book received favorable reviews: The Scotsman described it as "A delightful book ... It has abundant humour and a pervading charm ... An original and engaging description of a country and people of extraordinary interest."

The Keiths were on leave in Canada when war was declared on 3 September 1939. Harry was immediately ordered back to Borneo.

The Japanese invading forces landed in Sandakan on 19 January 1942. For the first few months of occupation, the Keiths were allowed to stay in their own home. On 12 May Agnes and George were imprisoned on Berhala Island (Pulau Berhala) near Sandakan, in a building that had once been the Government Quarantine Station, along with other Western women and children. Harry was imprisoned nearby. They spent eight months there before Agnes and George were sent to Kuching in Sarawak. They left by a small steamer on 12 January 1943 and arrived on January 20. They were imprisoned in Batu Lintang camp near Kuching, unusual in that it accommodated both prisoners of war and civilian internees in between eight and ten separate compounds. Harry later arrived at the camp. The camp was finally liberated on 11 September 1945 by the 9th Australian Army Division under the command of Brigadier T. C. Eastick. All three members of the Keith family had survived their internment.

Although punishable by death if discovered, many inmates of the camp, both civilian and POW, kept diaries and notes about their imprisonment. One of Agnes's fellow female internees, Hilda E. Bates, described Agnes in her diary entry dated 21 September 1944:

Among my companions in camp are some outstanding personalities, and the following of these. Mrs A.K. — a noted American novelist, who proposes to a book on our life here. She is much sought after by the Japanese Camp Commandant, as he has read one of her previous books about Borneo. He evidently holds the opinion that a cup of given in his office, and a packet of biscuits as a gift for her small son, will ensure him appearing as a hero in said book!

Mrs A.K. has an unusual appearance, being six feet in height, very thin, and with the stealthy lops of a Red Indian. She dresses in a startling and very flamboyant fashion, in very bright colours, while her hair is worn in two plaits, one over each shoulder, thus adding to a slightly Indian aura!

Mary Baldwin, a 70-year-old fellow-internee, did not get on well with Keith, suspecting that she was "too ready to be polite and co-operative with the Japanese guards and their officers in return for favours — notably food and medicine for her infant son." Co-operation with their captors was very much frowned on by the prisoners, although understandable in this case, given Keith's no doubt powerful desire to provide for her son.

After their liberation and a short period on Labuan Island for rest and recuperation, the Keiths returned to Victoria, British Columbia, where Harry had had a small country house since his bachelor days. In February 1946 he was asked to return to Borneo by the new Colonial Administration, which had taken over from the Chartered Company. He was to be in charge of food production. He agreed to go, so he and his family were split yet again. Agnes and George remained in Victoria, and Agnes worked on her second book, an autobiographical account of her imprisonment: on her release Agnes had gathered up her notes and diary entries from their various hiding places, and she used them as the basis for her book, Three Came Home, which was published in April 1947. It detailed the hardships and deprivations that the internees and POWs had undergone under the Japanese, and became a bestseller. In 1950, it was turned into a motion picture, with Claudette Colbert playing the role of Agnes.

Agnes and George finally returned to Sandakan in 1947, a full year after Harry. Borneo was a much-changed place, having suffered doubly, first under the Japanese occupation then from the ferocious Allied attacks as the liberation of the island took place. In 1951 the third book in Agnes's Borneo trilogy was published, entitled White Man Returns. This chronicled the time from Agnes's and George's return to Borneo up through December 1950. The Keiths remained in Sandakan until 1952.