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hen
I first heard about Three Came Home, an account
of American expat’s wife, Agnes’s years in the Japanese
internment camps, the historical details sounded intriguing.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the beauty and honesty with
which she writes, and that her words would draw me into
her appalling existence and create so vividly, that surreal and
terrifying calm of waiting – waiting for the invaders to reach
the house, waiting to be ordered away from her husband, waiting for the food to run out,
waiting for liberation… or even in death itself.
However this is no morbid tale, despite its vivid content; Agnes has a way of dashing
every sentence with her positive strength, and wasted no adjectives on self-pity. She
made the decision to stay with her husband – British Director of Agriculture; Harry –
despite repeated warnings to leave, and thus faced what would come with a stoic strength
of mind. “If we were born to war in our time, then we would face it together,” she writes,
“all three.”
By the time she was interned in the prison camp, Agnes was already an established
writer – indeed many of her captors had read her previous memoir, Land Below the
Wind, and she was often singled out for attention, both good and bad. Her belongings
were routinely searched for evidence of her writing, and Three Came Home was initially
written on scraps of paper that she would sew into the lining of her clothes or hidden
within her son’s toys. Despite the risk of keeping any notes at all, Agnes was compelled to
write. It was a passion that started when she was in her youth, growing up in America.
Adapting to New Life
It was Harry’s job that took her to Borneo (Sandakan), and Agnes adapted to her new
Strength in Adversity:
Three Came Home
by Agnes Keith
Hungerwasn’t the only thingAgnes Keith had to battlewith during her three and a half
years spent in a POWcamp under the JapaneseOccupation of Borneo thosemany, many
years ago. Loneliness, worry, abuse and illness all played their part inmaking lifemiserable,
without the added pressure of providing emotional and physical sustenance for her infant
son, and in copingwith the awful reality that eachmomentmight be her last.
W o r d s :
S a r a h R e e s
Agnes pictured with members of the Australian
army upon liberation.
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