Three Came Home

Borneo Trilogy #2

by Agnes Newton Keith

When the Japanese take Borneo in 1942, Agnes Keith is captured and imprisoned with her two-year-old son. Fed on minimal rations, forced to work through recurrent bouts of malaria and fighting with rats for scraps of food, Agnes Keith's spirit never completely dies. Keeping notes on scraps of paper which she hides in her son's home-made toys or buries in tins, she records a mother's pain at watching her child go hungry and her poignant pride in his development within these strange confines. She also describes her captors in all their complexity. Colonel Suga, the camp commander, is an intelligent, highly educated man, at times her adversary, at others a strange ally in a distorted world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Biography, War, World War II, Asia

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Agnes Keith was born in 1901 in Illinois but grew up in Hollywood long before "Tinsel Town" became what it is today. In 1934 she married Henry ("Harry") George Keith, an Englishman whom she had first met as a childhood friend of her brother. Harry was on leave from Sandakan where he had lived since 1925 and where he served as Conservator of Forests, Director of Agriculture, and Curator of the Museum for the government of British North Borneo. Sandakan then was the capital of North Borneo, a territory that was an anomaly, governed by a company, the British North Borneo Chartered Company. Agnes accompanied Harry back to Sandakan where she was introduced to the life of a 'memsahib' in an isolated British colonial community in an exotic land. Over the next five years, Agnes documented her observations and experiences in a highly personal series of articles that were published in her first book "Land Below the Wind" that won the Atlantic Monthly annual prize for non-fiction in 1939. Agnes writes with sensitivity and humour, capturing the essence of colonial life from the perspective of an American expat and describing the local people - Chinese, Murut, and Malay - with affection and sympathy. As the book draws to a close and the Keiths prepare to leave Sandakan on home leave after five years, the ominous clouds of war are looming, illustrated by an accidental encounter between the young daughter of the Chinese consul, a neighbor of the Keiths, and the Japanese consul and his wife who are guests for tea at the Keith house. After their leave, the Keiths returned to Sandakan where their son George was born. Soon they were engulfed by war and the family of three was interned with the small British community, first in a camp on Pulau Berhala off Sandakan and then at the notorious Batu Lintang camp near Kuching, Sarawak, where Agnes and little George were separated from Harry until the war ended and liberation came in 1945. All through their captivity Agnes secretly kept notes of their horrific experience that were published after the war in her second book "Three Came Home" (made into a film in 1950 starring Claudette Colbert). Agnes, Harry, and George returned to Sandakan after the war and rebuilt their house that had been destroyed in the war. Their subsequent years in North Borneo were the subject of Agnes's third book, "White Man Returns.".

Reviews

[Ellie Sorota · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this accidentally. My husband surprised me one Christmas with a set of books sold by the case from Little Brown Publishing, probably clearing out their warehouse. They were all old, mostly first-edition hardbacks of young adult novels and mysteries. I picked this up expecting a quick read - a little drama, a little mystery, a little diversion. Surprised, I discovered instead a true journalistic account of a mother's three year imprisonment, along with her husband and toddler in a Japanese POW camp on Borneo.

The beginning of the book read clunky for me. I couldn't catch on to the author's occasional sarcasm in her attempt to inject some lightness into oppressive scenes. Tenses changed throughout the book, even mid-paragraph, and I didn't realize until the end of the book that this was probably because Keith at times interjects word for word from her journals. Once some of these pieces came together, I was able to settle more into Keith's style of storytelling.

It may be helpful to know from the outset that Keith kept hidden journals and notes throughout her three year imprisonment, was released in 1945 and "Three Came Home" hit the press in 1947. The quickness from journal to print and the intensity of the personal experience helps explain the sometimes hodgepodge feel of the writing. This isn't someone who's had years to reflect on their experiences and whittled down a clearcut way to convey them. Keith is still processing and still recovering as she writes, and I believe that becomes more and more clear as you move further through the story.

Unique to this account of a POW experience is that Keith's toddler, George, is imprisoned with her, along with over 30 other children. Heartbreaking and fascinating is a child's imprisoned upbringing. As an example, older children enduring starvation would daydream about food from freedom: cakes, candies and other children's comfort foods. The younger children, like Keith's son, having no memory of life before POW status would daydream about a surprise egg or an extra bit of rice.

Also unique was Keith's bitterness throughout her experience. Most war accounts are written by soldiers, aid workers, targeted peoples or missionaries. These roles frame suffering in a certain purpose that helps counter or salve the expected bitterness arising from such an experience. A soldier suffers for his country, a person of a certain race/culture suffers for his people and a missionary for his God. Keith was none of these. Simply an American living abroad due to her husband's work post, she had no frame for her suffering, little help in making sense of the evil she endured. The result was bitterness and hardness of heart, which she acknowledged.

I finished reading Keith's story and was struck that this treasure, this personal suffering courageously exposing the worst of a person's life that we might learn from her experience, this little brown hardcover book sat in a warehouse gathering dust, waiting to be sold by the crate. Keith's offering is wasted if not read. Track it down today.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reminded of this book today while reading a review of another book set in the same time period and circumstances. I believe I read this book when I was in junior high or high school, about 50 years ago, and my memory of it is still strong enough for the 4* rating. A reread is probably in order at some point but I believe a memory that strong certainly justifies adding it to my list of "read" books with a comment.

Thanks to Tara Masih's review of The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage for bringing back this memory.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Agnes Keith's account of spending three years in a Japanese camp on the island of Borneo in the South Pacific during World War II. She is a gifted writer, able to create a candid portrait of internees and captors alike. My bookmark had ample space for jotting down new (to me) vocabulary. Listing the words within context will convey the feel of the book.

My vocabulary list tour through the book:

Offal (pg. 141) "The new camp site was to be over the excrement pits of the soldiers' camps, where the ground was full of hookworm, and the air was full of mosquitoes. It wa the third time we had moved in 14 months, and with each change we lost strength, and gained new diseases. This time we were exchanging our newly planted vegetable garden for an offal pit."

Punctilio (pg. 143) "The movers themselves matched the goods that they handled; they, like our material belongings, were broken-down, ragged, pathetic; they, like our beds, chairs, stools, and tables, were inelegant, but invaluable. Shirtless, shoeless, stockingless, hatless, each one bandaged, with a septic leg or arm, a cough, a limp, a droop--in the past these men had suffered with excess punctilio; today they scarcely had pants."

Concatenation (pg. 187) "We had just been reminded with especial emphasis one day to take our washing off the line, in order to make the camp look neat, to clean our barracks, to keep up our morale, to be happy, to keep well, and to be clean. With which advice, our rations for the day were cut. This concatenation of circumstances warned me that there must be either more Japanese generals in town, or Japanese gentlemen of the press, to enjoy the sight of our well-being, and help eat our rations."

Perquisites (pg. 197) "As the packages were addressed to 'American Internees', they were turned over to the four Americans...for distribution. The four of us were called to the Japanese offices, and each one was given a pair of men's army shoes, and a food package for herself, as the perquisites of Americans."

Palliative (pg. 224) "A stranger coming into our camp would not have guessed from the atmosphere that all of us were hungry, many were suffering from physical complaints for which we had neither remedy nor palliative, and all were sick at heart."

Obsequies (pg. 227) "The procession passes out of our gate and moves on past the sentry. Down the road, in front of the men's clinic, it pauses. Soon it is joined there by another coffin, this one draped with a Union Jack and carried by soldiers. In it is the body of a British soldier who had died this morning. The tropical climate allows for no delay in funeral obsequies."

Humdinger (pg. 259) "The humdinger or small rheostat was made from stolen old brass, bakelite, and wire."

Quotes:

p.218 "It was like every other Christmas tree, the shrine of great promise."

p.220 "Each one of us was beginning to know that it is not enough to exist, that one must have a reason for existing. 'Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God', was never so true as in prison camp. And the less bread there was, the more we needed the Word."

p.221 "I thought of all the young men of all races, who were dying all over the world in battle, who had at some time lain like George at their mothers' side. When those boys died, what did they die for? How often must they have asked themselves this question. I could not believe that their answer was "For hate." Hate is worth neither living nor dying for."

p.224 "I doubted the existence of anything beyond myself, but more than ever I needed something. As life grew grimmer my only sign of something beyond was the constant search and desire for it."

p.224 "We had two virtues: good cheer, and courage. The morale in camp was always good. We knew the only way to make camp life bearable was to laugh, not cry. Tears and gloom were resented more than vice."

[Dee Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written first-hand story of a mother's account of the human will to survive...the struggle to go on for her child's sake. The setting is a Japanese prisoners' of war camp in Borneo during WW II. I wish this woman would to have had a spiritual relationship with God to depend on as her rock during this horrible period. The reader needs to have tissues handy.
I was given this first-edition book by my sister-in-law in 2002 as one two first-edition books she got for $1.00 each from Pike County, AL library "share" stack. The other book is Never Dies the Dream by Margaret Landon. Landon is better known for her first book Anna and the King of Siam which became known popularly through the musical The King and I, one of my favorites!

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently bought a copy of this book (a 1947 edition by a Canadian publishing company) only to find out, when I got home, that I already have a copy published by Time Life Books. The latter is even better since it has a photo of the author taken in 1964.

I then decided to read it already before I forget again and buy a third copy.

The author was an American citizen who was married to an Englishman, Harry Keith, then working for his country as Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture of North Borneo (then under British Protectorate). They had a two-year old son George.

When the Second World War broke out in the Pacific the author with her young son actually had a chance to leave Borneo for safety but she had decided to stay with her husband. When the Japanese came they were all then imprisoned in one Japanese prison camp after another, the couple in separate prison camps, George with the author. Prison life, of course, was hard with all kinds of dangers, deprivations and sufferings (both physical and psychological) made more difficult by the fact that the author had a very young boy to take care of. But if you’d compare what they’ve endured with those kept in Nazi concentration camps, you’d say that camp life with these Japanese captors, at least for the author’s family, was a happy picnic. As the title of the book (furtively written during their imprisonment) suggests, all three of them survived the war. But had they been in Auschwitz instead, for example, no one most likely had come home and there would have been no book.

Literature had contributed to their survival. Before the war, the author wrote a book about their life in Borneo called “Land Below the Wind.’ It won the $5,000 Atlantic Monthly Non-Fiction Prize for ‘the most interesting and distinctive work of non-fiction.’ It was translated into Japanese and was a huge success even there in Japan. By some fortunate happenstance it had been read and tremendously enjoyed not only by some of the Japanese prison guards, but also by Colonel Suga—the shrewd, arrogant Japanese commandant of all civilian internees and prisoners of war in Borneo. Colonel Suga, in other words, was a fan and he became a benefactor of the Keiths. When he was in the mood to be kind, he’d give them food or medicine every now and then. He, as well as some guards, likewise took a fancy on the boy George who, on countless occasions, received gifts from them (sometimes secretly) like bananas, eggs, cookies and candies.

Of course, food was still scarce. The women never stopped trying to find sources for sustenance as they were perpetually hungry. A part of the author’s reminiscences about their efforts to feed themselves and the other children in the camp both surprised and amused me:

“Once a day we had masses of what we then considered an inedible vegetable. It was in the same category as spinach: green, leafy, with a metallic flavor; but where spinach was capable of being masticated this had to be swallowed in ropes, as the stalks were like green rubber tubes. The local name was ‘kang kong’. In time we improved our technique with it by chopping it up small before cooking. Then the effect was that of swallowing small rubber washers, instead of lengths of tubing.”

In the Philippines it is also called that but just one word: ‘kangkong.’ I do wonder where in the word it got that name. But it is among the cheapest vegetables because it thrives and grows abundantly wherever there’s plenty of water. It need not be ‘swallowed in ropes’ because its long stems can easily chewed and grinded (if you have teeth!) before swallowing. Indeed it is also spinach. It is sometimes called elsewhere as ‘river spinach,’ water spinach’, ‘swamp cabbage’ or ‘swamp morning glory’ (because of its flowers). In French it is called ‘liseron d’eau.’

When Japan surrendered, Borneo was liberated by Allied forces. Unlike in Germany where the orgy of killings continued long after its surrender and Hitler’s death, those in the Keith’s prison camps, at least, were spared of these senseless horrors.

I particularly liked the author’s introspective thoughts about the kind, and sometimes cruel, Colonel Suga:


“Now in Labuan the last chapter was written of Colonel Suga. The last chapter of a little Japanese man, onetime graduate from the University of Washington, patron of the arts, recipient of World War 1 Allied decorations; a military man with shaven head; a sick man with diabetes who eats no sugar; a soldier who likes children; a little man with a big sword; a religious dilettante, born Shintoist and turning Catholic; a hero and a figure of ridicule; a Japanese patriot, Commander of All Prisoners of War and Internees in Borneo…and a human being. Now in Labuan is written the end of Colonel Suga. He cut his threatened bled to death in an Allied cell, on the day that Harry, George, and I left Kuching for freedom.

“The end of his life, but not the answer to the query of his being—was he good, or was he bad? Were we better off, or worse, under a Western-educated Japanese who knew Western ideas? Did he have more prejudice against us, knowing OUR prejudices? Could he have helped us? Did he try?

“I shall say first the good things that I know of him. He was courteous to all in the women’s camp, and kind personally to many. He bowed when he might have beaten us, he smiled when he might have kicked. Courtesy does not fill empty stomachs, but it soothes worn nerves, and most Japanese officers I met neither soothed nerves nor filled stomachs.

“Colonel Suga’s picture of himself was as the cultured and beneficent administrator of the ideal internment camps Kuching. He was always kind to the children, often brought them biscuits and sweets, supplied means for their teaching, gave them what liberty he could. They all liked him.

“He had good and kindly impulses, and a real desire for interracial understanding. He was kind to me personally. I believe that he saved my husband from death.

“Against this, I place the fact that all the prisoners in Borneo were inexorable moving towards starvation. Prisoners of war and civilians were beaten, abused, and tortured. Daily living conditions of prison camps were almost unbearable.

“At Sandakan and Ranau and Brunei, North Borneo, batches of prisoners in fifties and sixties were marched out to dig their own graves, then shot or bayoneted and pushed into the graves, many before they were dead. All over Borneo hundreds and thousands of sick, weak, weary prisoners were marched on roads and paths until they fell from exhaustion, when their heads were beaten in with rifle butts and shovels, and split open with swords, and they were left to rot unburied. On one march 2,970 POWs started, and three survived.

“The Kuching prison camps were scheduled to march on September 15, 1945, had peace not intervened. It was this abandoned order which Colonel Suga had read to me on the day peace pamphlets were dropped.

“I have since heard reports of other Japanese prison camps outside of Borneo: in most of them conditions were better than ours, in few they were worse.

“For these black chapters in captivity Colonel Suga, commander in Borneo, must be held responsible.

“What his orders were, I do not know. No doubt he must obey them, or risk himself. Whether he attempted to save us I do not know, but I do know that it takes more even than physical courage to stand up for human values against patriotic seal, in wartime. Until the gun is held at your head, until the whisper comes of ‘Traitor,’ you cannot know what you will do.

“Colonel Suga was accused by the Japanese of being prejudiced in our favour, and accused by us of unnecessary brutality. We knew that he vanished on the eve of particularly cruel orders, given or carried out, as he had vanished when he knew Nakata was after me. In the cause of humanity, he might have helped us, but in wartime the cause of humanity is lost.

“In this weighing of a Japanese military man I consider two things. First, that all these horrors which I have described are war, which itself is a matter of life and death. War is the acceptance of suffering and atrocity, and the sacrifice of decency and good thinking. War itself is the crime against humanity. When we accept war we accept war crime; we then have no grounds to complain.

“Second: We in Kuching suffered under Colonel Suga and the Japanese. The entire family of Colonel Suga was wiped out by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Colonel Suga himself cut his throat in the Allied cells, in Labuan.

“Honors in suffering and atrocities seem even.”

After the war the Keith family recuperated in Canada then went back to Borneo when Harry was summoned back to work there and help in the postwar reconstruction. Their adventures in the next three years became the subject of the author’s third book, ‘White Man Returns’ published in 1951. Thereafter they were sent on a tour of the Philippines as UN representatives. Their stint there, where they were witnesses to the glorious election of Ramon Magsaysay as Philippine President, became the topic of the author’s fourth book, ‘Bare Feet in the Palace’ published in 1955.

I’d be very interested to get hold of a copy of this book.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agnes Newton Keith was an American who, in the early 1940s, was married to a Brit who was the Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture in Civil Service in North Borneo. As the war moved closer, there was no official evacuation of any American, British or European women and children. Agnes Keith chose to stay with her husband and they, along with their young son, were interned by the Japanese from January 1942 until September 1945.

Keith had already written a novel about Borneo that had been widely read. On the day after they were imprisoned, the Commander of all prisoners and internees in Borneo told her that he had admired her book and "requested" that she write a book for him about her internment. She did write a book for him but kept notes about the real story which she was able to hide and published the real story after the war.

This book is far more interesting than depressing. What I especially like is Keith's even handedness. She writes "The Japanese in this book are as war made them, not as God did, and the same is true for the rest of us. War is always the story of hate; it makes no difference with whom one fights. The hate destroys you spiritually as the fighting destroys you bodily. If there are tears shed here, they are for the death of good feeling. If there is horror, it is for those who speak indifferently of "the next war". If there is hate, it is for hateful qualities, not nations. If there is love, it is because this alone kept me alive and sane."

There was a film version made in 1950 with Claudette Colbert. I saw it years ago and was the reason I took this book off the bookstore shelf. It was actually on last night but now I don't think I could watch Claudette in an internment camp in full make up. Ah, Hollywood.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agnes Keith's story of her imprisonment in a Borneo internment camp by the Japanese during WW II is awe inspiring and amazing in so many ways. She presents her three plus years of captivity in all its horrible details but she doesn't ask the reader to feel sorry for her - more to gain strength from what she and her young son George went through and how they survived. Her civil-service British husband is kept in an adjacent camp and his situation and those of British and Australian POWs are heartbreakingly detailed as well.

In the last pages of this book she makes a very moving statement which greatly affected me, "I now know the value of freedom. In all of my life before I had existed as a free woman, and I didn't know it. This is what freedom means to me. The right to live with, to touch and to love, my husband and my children. The right to look about me without fear of seeing people beaten. The capacity to work for ourselves 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. The freedom of my eyes to scan the face of the earth . . . without barbed wire across my vision. The freedom of my body to walk . . . and no sentry to stop me. Opportunity to earn the food to keep me strong."

This book was a page-turner and I highly recommend it.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this because it was in the same vein as the Santo Tomas Internment books I've been reading, though this book has nothing to do with the Philippines. It's a book about American and British civilians interned by the Japanese in Borneo, at around the same time, World War II. The writing is beautiful — very lyrical, poetic, with very long sentences, which I like. Lovely descriptions. Author is very understanding, sympathetic, so much more forgiving than I can imagine anyone to be in that situation, but objective.

This book was really remarkable for me especially after reading Bread and Rice. Keith appears to have more courage and insight — she doesn't demonize the Japanese and doesn't cower from them. She's also more rational, whereas the author in Bread and Rice goes a little native and becomes superstitious at times and starts to believe herself precognitive when she has nightmares.

That is not to say Keith was never frightened or never felt things deeply — it's clear she has her moments of fright and great emotion, but the way she looks back on those moments, the way they're written in an understated way, really highlights the horrors she experienced. She focuses also, more on the tangible details, the efforts the adults made to make the children's lives happy even during their internment, rather than on all the fear. It make the book so much more human for me.

[Miapalencia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devoured this book in two days. It is beautifully written, with so much compassion, love and sadness. Keith offers a brutal account of her days as a prisoner of war in Japanese-captured Borneo, which she recorded down and carefully hid on bits of scrap paper at much peril. I did not feel that she was prejudiced against her Japanese captors as much as she was greatly saddened by war itself, and hate. She presents here the terrible conditions of which she survived in great detail, and I couldn't help but race to the end to find peace and freedom with and for her, at last. A highly recommended read.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important for being written just a few years after the end of the war and based on notes taken by the author and hidden away whilst she was interned. It feels a fairly even handed account of what was an incredibly traumatic experience although be aware that as the wife of a colonial administrator (although herself American) there are occasionally sentiments that are uncomfortable today and there is some irony in the fact that once everyone regains their freedom the British revert to being the occupying force instead of the Japanese...

With that aside it’s an incredible insight in to how a group can come together in order to survive and as a result it’s not as depressing a reading experience as you would expect - although by all accounts the women were in a better position than the men. There’s even plenty of humour, even if much of it is black (American or not there is a lot of stiff upper lip here!). Overall an interesting story that also serves as a study in the complex nature of good and evil/heroes and villains - and how these lines can be completely blurred in war.

[Nicholas Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stars really for an absolutely harrowing story of WW2 civilian internment in Borneo. Women and children held captive and at the mercy and caprices of their Japanese captors. The tables have been turned and the much vaunted British colonial superiority is now employed by the Japanese who are not all that inclined to provide their captives with an all inclusive holiday (meals included). In fact food is in desperately short supply as are all other goods and a prison economy emerges from the prisoner's destitution. Agnes Newton Keith is somewhat well known by her captors as her previous book about her experiences in Borneo "Land Before The Wind" enjoyed some popularity in Asia.

This however does not protect her from a sexual assault and a beating when she lodges a complaint against the soldier involved. It's mostly a personal story collated from her prison notes buried and hidden in the camp and presented in book form here. Somewhat piecemeal as a result and there's not a lot of emphasis on other prisoners who shared her ordeal. There are some references to the soldiers and civilian prisoners in nearby camps who of course are treated even worse by the Japanese.

She's remarkably forgiving considering the brutal conditions endured by all and while some occasional colonial attitudes to other races creep in every so often, I was struck by her postscript.

" I believe that: While we have more than we need on this continent, and others die for want of it, there can be no lasting peace. When we work as hard in peacetime to make this world decent to live in, as in wartime we work to kill, the world will be decent, and the causes for which men fight will be gone."

[Khairul Azlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recognized this book the first time when my family and i visited the Agnes Keith house at Sandakan. And it brought me to excitement when i found the book at the internet in a form of PDF. Cause i know this type of book it's hard to find. This book tell the story of Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from her husband Harry, and with a young son to care for. Keith was initially interned at Berhala Island near Sandakan, North Borneo (today's Sabah) but spent most of her captivity at Batu Lintang camp at Kuching, Sarawak. For your information, a movie had been produced based on the novel and it became a success during the time.

[Moira Mackinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the harrowing story of a family held prisoner by the Japanese in Borneo during WW2. It is told with stark honesty and describes the day-to-day horrors of life as prisoners of war. Agnes Keith was an American, married to a British husband and with a 2-year-old son when they were interned. That they all survived could be seen as a miracle, but was also due in large part to her determination to keep her son alive whatever the cost to herself. I found this book doubly interesting to me personally because I have myself visited Borneo, and my maternal grandparents also spent the War as prisoners of the Japanese, although not in Borneo.

[Rowena Shuma · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting & horrible bit of history

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book about surviving in a Japanese Prison camp during WW2. The starvation, abuse, beatings, disease and every other thing that the Japanese could do to the prisoners was handled with the raw courage and survival of these brave men and women.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing story of this woman's discovery in a Japanese Prison Camp during WWII that hatred was self-destructive and love was more powerful than hate.

Here are a couple of quotes that I appreciated: p. 149 "Thinking was sometimes the way to wisdom, when bitter realities could be left behind in the foretasting of dreams and ambitions; but sometimes it was the way to destruction, when one was overwhelmed in an agony of despair."

p. 231-2 "Each one of us was beginning to know that it is not enough to exist, that one must have a reason for existing. "Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God", was never so true as in prison camp. The word the proceeded out of the mouth of God for me was the warning not to be consumed by hate. Hate is a wasteful emotion; for my own sake, I didn't wish to hate the Japanese or the people about me. Every night when I lay down beside George (her son) I was filled with love for him. Every night we said the Lord's Prayer together. I was not praying for an answer, or to praise the Lord, but to ease myself. I was looking for rest and peace, and a way to make life bearable, when it was not bearable. With George beside me I could know that love holds together in time of danger, love soothes and strengthens, love builds up, where hate destroys. I could pray then to love and to God, the inseparable."

[Marissa Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am a Malaysian residing in Sabah, I was clueless about what the Europeans faced when Borneo was predominant with the Japanese army in 1941 to 1945 until I read this book. All I knew back then was the Malays, Indian, and the Chinese have badly mistreated especially the Chinese that the Japanese army hated the most.

I am grateful for the Asiatics in Borneo at that time, few Japanese soldiers, Colonel Suga, and Dr Yamamoto who came to Mrs Keith's aid and her husband, Harry. What the prisoners faced were horrendous as some died by being beheaded, of starvation, and of diseases like Malaria and Dysentery.

While I was reading this, I can't help but compare to what the Jews had to face during the Holocaust which I think worse. Thank God the Japanese didn't completely strip the Europeans of what they possessed like how the Nazis stripped the Jews of what they had, otherwise the captives in Borneo couldn't survive the captivity as they used what they had to smuggle for eggs, milk, aspirin, and cigarettes.

It's a relief to know that the three Keiths: Agnes, Harry, and George their son survived the war. I'm fond of Agnes for being such a dutiful wife to Harry. She didn't back off from the troubles although she's been warned many times about the arrival of the Japanese army. She chose to stick together with Harry and with George.

[Deb Cornell · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can get your hands on a copy of this title, you will be mightily rewarded. Agnes Newton Keith's husband, Harry, was Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for the government of North Borneo under a British Chartered Company when the Japanese seized Borneo in January of 1942. Harry, Agnes and their one-year-old son, George, spent the next three years in Japanese POW camps. Agnes, already a journalist and published author, kept notes on any scrap of paper she could find hiding them in tins she buried underneath her barracks or in the latrine, or in "plain sight" literally stuffing her son's homemade toys. She was determined to chronicle the details of their captivity and the result was . To say conditions were harsh is the height of understatement. Keith's memoir manages to strike an appropriate balance between fact and philosophy. I caution readers to judge this as a product of its time. I believe you will find yourself in awe of the strength and resolve these prisoners demonstrated on a daily basis.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This true account of the authors captivity in a Japanese POW camp on Borneo during WWII was a hard read. And by that I mean that the descriptions of what humans will do to others was horrible. I can’t imagine anyone coming out of such captivity and recovering from the horrors.

There is an old movie based on this book staring, Claudette Colbert, that I saw a few years ago. It was a touching movie, but after reading the book I can tell it only just skimmed the surface of the horrors of the camps.

This book is worth reading.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to start this book because I love historical accounts of any kind-especially World War 2. Yet for some reason this book did not catch my attention. I finally figured out that I just could not personally connect with the narrator. I know that what she went through was tragic and awful and the fact that she was able to move on with her life was amazing. Since I couldn't connect, I lost interest.

[Rynell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me realize that I have never had anything to complain about. I appreciated the author's candid voice and honesty. This book revolves around the themes of suffering. Violence, pain, sadness and hunger are woven into Keith's account of being a prisoner of war.

I found some typos and had to resist the urge to edit.

[Margaret McLane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly inspiring. I had difficulty putting it down.

Unexpectedly, writing with a voice of thoughtful consideration, intelligence, feels to me like a woman of today, a journalist, speaking, instead of a woman slightly younger than my grandmother.
She is easy to read, colorful, concise, poetic.

She wrote this in the year after being liberated, much of it from notes smuggled out ..."from the stuffing of her son's Teddy bear, his sleeping mat, etc."

After unbelievable hardships, pain, starvation, lonliness and loss, she still wrote:

"... all these horrors which I have described are war, which itself is a matter of life and death. War is the acceptance of suffering and atrocity, and the sacrifice of decency and good thinking. **War itself is the crime against humanity.** When we accept war we accept war crime; we then have no grounds to complain."
"We in K__ suffered under Colonel S__ and the Japanese. The entire family of Colonel S__ was wiped out by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Colonel S__ cut his throat in ..."
"Honors in suffering and atrocities seem even." (P. 294)

There are so many great lines, but a few great quotes are:

After being released, while on the military transport home,
"... sitting in the lounge talking, listening to the radio broadcasts, we learned the payoff. The world had not changed. Anglo-Saxons still despised the Jews, the Jews the Filipinos, the Filipinos the Negros, the Negros the Chinese, the Chinese, and the Chinese everybody. The Americans hated the English, the English the Australians, and everybody hated the Russians, who hated each other. Love of country flourished, while love of humanity withered; worship of God was present, and following of Christ was absent. This was the victory we had won. This was the world men had bought with their blood. This was peace." (P. 307)

After learning of a young POW with 2 broken hands who had, the day after he had been liberated from prison camp in Japan, beaten to death with his fists, 2 Japanese camp commanders, she writes,
"...I did not believe that we had fought [this war] in order to retaliate in kind for the actions which we condemned. But war brutalizes all whom it touches; if it not do so, it could not be endured." (P. 307)

"I saw that we had come far from our old concepts of honor and disgrace.
In war, we women must fight with all of ourselves, whether we are fighting against Japanese soldiers or atomic bombs."

**
"I am proud to call myself an American; but I do not call America mine. It's goods and plenty, it's products, it's people, it's great ideals, and it's freedom belong now to the world.
Today we live in a world, not a state. Discoveries of science eliminate space and time. We have become a body of human beings, not of nationals. The responsibility of the entire body is ours. No matter how good our own conditions now, we cannot ignore starving Europe, a demoralized and fighting Asia." (P. 314)

"I believe that:
While we have more than we need on this continent, and others die for want of it, there can be no lasting peace.
When we work as hard in peacetime to make this world decent to live in, as in wartime we work to kill, the world will be decent, and the causes for which men fight will be gone.
- November 1946" (P. 317)

My copy:
hardcover, with a printed cloth, 3 color - black, brown and cream - a (Borneo?) design, like a hand printed, native cloth. Similar to the cover (see GoodReads under The Borneo Trilogy series) Published 1947.
She had not yet published part 3, "White Man Returns".

[James Varney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing read; not like anything else and not like anything I can imagine being written today.

Borneo sounds like Eden; the life Keith had there with her husband, Harry, and son, George, before the war is truly idyllic. She is so matter-of-fact in her tone, so old fashioned in her solidity, that some of the ethereal beauty of the virgin rain forest there remains opaque. But the glimpses she gives us are magic.

Probably the biggest takeaway from "Three Came Home" is love trumps hate, a point Keith makes repeatedly. Her ability to forgive is bracing; her portraits of various Japanese captors feel genuine. And there are real heroes here, too, such as Mrs. Cohen in the hospital, who is later executed. Death's wings are flapping constantly, hovering over the camps, and Keith struggles to keep her sanity, an achievement she owed in no small part to George whom she had to protect.

She notes: "Here in captivity the natural processes of life are reversed. In the outside world things are born, and things die. Here in this camp things die, but they are not born."

A nice passage: "Sometimes good guards would allow us an hour in the morning and another hour at 6 p.m. That was escape from hell into heaven. I believed then that work was the only thing that kept me sane. In the end I learned that it isn't outward circumstances which determine what one can endure, but something in oneself which either breaks or stays intact, under strain. It isn't the difference in strain, it's the difference in tensile strength in people."

[Misha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel a bit guilty giving such a low rating to an autobiography about someone who survived this experience, but I just could not finish this book. I knew it was written as the events unfolded in the early 1940s and was published in 1946, so I was expecting it to feel dated. While those expectations helped, they just couldn't be overcome. The author and her family were relatively wealthy European/American colonial expats who felt it was their inherent right to be served by those of other races. I had expected this and wasn't shocked by it, but I supposed I'd hoped her difficult experiences would change some of her prejudices. It was hard to read about the attitude with which she accepted gifts of food delivered to her in prison at the risk of her former servants' lives, even as she commented that it had cost them huge sums of money and great danger to themselves. She seemed grateful for the food, but very casual about the risks they took as though it was their continued duty to serve her. Reading about her "great emotional breakthrough" after months of imprisonment when she decided to forego powdering her face was the final straw. It's hard to feel deeply for someone whose major revelation in prison is that she can quit using face powder and still survive another day. Yes, being locked up like that sounded wretched, but reading page after page about this group of formerly rich ladies squabbling just did me in and I quit. Also, the title itself is a bit of a spoiler - I already knew all three of them made it home.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

My parents had an old hardcover copy of this book around our house for years. I often thought about reading it but never did. I found this trade paperback copy at a thrift store a couple of years ago and finally got around to it. Sorry I put this off for so long. This was a very compelling account of the author's (Agnes Keith) imprisonment by the Japanese during WWII. She and her husband, Harry were assigned to a post in Borneo at the start of the war. Harry was the director of agriculture for the government of North Borneo. Agnes could have left Borneo before the Japanese invaded but decided to stay with her husband. When the Japanese arrived, she and her young son George are placed in a women's prison camp while Harry is put in a separate civilian men's camp. The book goes on to describe the many hardships endured by Agnes including lack of food and medicine, unsanitary conditions, disease including constant bouts with Malaria, and at one point, she was attacked by a Japanese guard who attempted to rape her. This resulted in a severe beating by the Japanese who didn't believe her story. Agnes and the other women thought the war would end in a few months but instead they were imprisoned for three and a half years. The struggle to survive was constant but in the end, Agnes did not fault the Japanese but she decided war itself was to blame for their miseries. Overall, a good memoir of life in a Japanese prison camp.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lower rating has nothing to do with the quality of writing. Keith is a brilliant storyteller and the fact that she survived a Japanese Internment Camp while raising a child is a testament to just how much a human being can endure. I found her casual racism (though very typical of the period) to be incredibly off-putting. She was the worst mix of American and British - believing that she had no "race hatred" but still seeing everything through a colonist lens. No one should suffer like her family did. I just found less and less sympathy in me everytime she described white people and the quality of their features or described at length how white Europeans were clearly designed for intellectual pursuits and the Native people of Borneo were made for physical work or any number of comparisons that made me go: "Yikes." I'm glad I read it, because I want a well rounded view of what happened in World War II, I'm just glad I discovered it at this point in my life and as a more critical reader.

[Yeo_heng_hau YEO · Rating 4 out of 5]

American Agnes Goodwillie Newton, a journalist, married British conservator Henry George Keith in Los Angeles, California in 1934 and both of them set sail for Sandakan, Sabah where the latter was a Conservator of Forest for the British North Borneo Chartered Company. He was also the Director of Agriculture, Game Warden and Honorary Curator of the Sandakan Museum. When the Japanese occupied Sandakan in January 1942, together with all Europeans, the couple and their two-year old boy Harry were interned on Berhala Island and subsequently at the Batu Lintang prison camp in Kuching, all in for a period of three and a half years . While in Kuching Agnes wrote in scraps of paper of life in the camp. The scraps of paper were hidden in Harry's toys, mattress and buried in tins in the ground. After liberation in September 1945 all these papers were collected together to form the basis of the book, published in 1947 and subsequently turned into a movie as well in 1950.

[Kuching Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book probably for two reasons - I like war history from the human rather than military perspective and I live in Kuching where part of the book was set. I also went googling extensively after I'd finished the book because the author makes no mention of a step-daughter (Harry had a daughter born in 1927 - probably to a local woman) and with all the prose about the importance of family etc, I thought it unusual that the daughter is not mentioned anywhere. It seems she had been taken to Canada before the war started to live with Harry's parents. Anyway, I did enjoy this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the war history and occupation of Borneo by the Japanese during WW2.

[Greg Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I began this book, I was disappointed at the scattered structure and haphazard style of writing. Nothing seemed to fit into a conscious retelling of Keith's experience.

This style aligned itself, however, with the fragmented scraps of noted she saved while in the internment camp. I became fascinated with her trials, and this book does a great job of highlighting the best and worst of people. When she gives a name and deed, it is either to extol or condemn, and the levels of compassion or the levels of apathy continually surprised me. The greatest issue I found is that writing is insufficient in allowing the reader to experience the years she endured; thank goodness for that.

Read this book. You will be glad you did.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written shortly after WW II, "Three Came Home" is the story of a family torn apart by their captivity in Borneo after the Japanese conquer the country. Incredible events during three plus years of incarceration are met with courage. A mother's love for her child and her husband sustain the family in spite of the years of starvation and separation. Later made into a movie starring Claudet Coubert, the book is a classic of a time we are beginning to forget. We can't forget what happened to those displaced persons held by the Japanese. Excellent! Well written! Credible and immediate with truth. Highly recommended.